Another Day at the Office
by Tayta Malikai
Summary: Once a thriving metropolis in the Sol System, Titan Station is plunged into terror by the deadly alien threat. As civilians die and systems fail, the men and women of the Earth Government battle desperately to save the station from the Necromorph threat.
1. Complacency

**Complacency**

The metal and composite hallways of the Sprawl buzzed and teemed with vibrant life as the two suited men armed with SWS pulse rifles walked through them on their routine patrol.

Their presence was small, but in the confines of the station's hallways it was significant. As they rounded the corners of the myriad intersections in the Sprawl's hallways and bulkheads, the residents of Titan Station reacted to the appearance of the station's police and security forces.

Their varied reactions were a valued source of information to EarthGov's civil demographics experts, and were another reason why squads of Titan Station Security officers were assigned to patrol the station's interior. Most of the residents regarded the passing security officers with a marked degree of respect, either for the job they did policing the station or their capacity for unleashing violence, and that was all they asked for.

Some residents turned their eyes down and scurried away like guilty rats upon sighting the security officers; and while suspicious behaviour was cause enough to investigate a potential security threat, officers would never reach the ends of their patrol routes under those conditions.

Then there were even the Unitologists, who shot glares of hatred and despise at the security officers as if they were pulse rounds.

"Man," Corporal Darrell Tyler remarked, his words unheard from those he was referring to thanks to his sound-proofed helmet, "that's gotta be like, what, the fifth pair of Uni lovebirds we've come across today. And we're not even an hour in."

Sergeant Scott Fairbanks, Tyler's patrol partner and superior, turned his head to watch the couple, a man and a woman both wearing Unitologist trinkets and giving the security officers a look of deep resentment. "You might be on to something there, Tyler," he chuckled as they disappeared around a corner. "There does seem to be a lot more Unis about than usual."

"Yeah," Tyler agreed. "I wonder what they're up to. It's only been a month since the last time they tried to cause trouble."

"You don't think they're going to push their luck again, do you?" Scott asked. He remembered that incident very well: a massive riot that had turned nasty when some of the more zealous Unitologists burned the last straw by lighting homemade incendiaries and throwing them at the line of security officers. Scott had been there, along with his former partner, and his partner had been amongst the unlucky officers in the front line.

Once the Unitologists went that far, the security line had no choice but to respond. Not all of the Unitologists were rendered unconscious by the taser arcs or the stun gas, and those who didn't flee the scene took it upon themselves to charge the security line. The resulting chaos had been brutal, and left many of the Unitologist rioters hospitalized due to their injuries.

Needless to say, the Unitologists claimed that the whole incident had been the security officers' fault.

"I'd hope not," Tyler replied. "The last thing any of us want is civil war on a space station. Everything would go straight to hell. Some Uni convert thinks it's a great idea to compromise life support, we all have to evacuate and spend a few months at Jupiter while they fix the life support, and we've all accomplished jack shit."

"Surely they wouldn't–" Scott started, but then he thought back to his experiences with Unitologists and how stupidly devoted they could be to their faith. "No, you're probably right, Tyler," he told him.

Tyler chuckled. "Thanks, Fairbanks," he said, and the pair of security officers fell silent as they walked. Until they turned another corner, and Scott was the first to point out, "Hey, look what we've got up ahead."

In the hallway in front of them, a small group of teenage girls was strolling along, chatting and giggling amongst themselves as if they hadn't a care in the world. Even as trained and experienced as he was as an officer charged with maintaining the safety of the Sprawl's community, the sight made Scott feel a slight twinge of envy.

"Oh, yeah," Tyler chuckled, giving Scott a thumbs up. "School must be out already. Oh, those days…" Scott suspected he was grinning under his helmet, but he gave it no attention as the group of girls noticed the pair.

"Hey, officers!" one of the girls called, waving at them. "How's patrol duty going?"

Before Scott could say anything, Tyler activated his helmet's external speaker with a tiny crackle. "Heh, not bad at all," he answered the girl. "Only eighty-six incidences of undisposed waste, forty-three incidences of hazardous negligence, twenty-seven incidences of attempted assault, and sixteen incidences of attempted sabotage. _And_–" he paused for effect "–at least twelve Unitologists," he added with a chuckle.

As he must have expected, the girls burst into giggles. One of them even paused briefly to say, "Aww, that's so mean of you, officer."

"Really? I'm sorry," Tyler said, mimicking the girl's sarcastic tone. Scott was starting to feel somewhat awkward standing in the hallway with these girls present, and passing residents giving them odd looks; even another Unitologist, glaring at them for Tyler's comment. Ignorant to Scott's discomfort, Tyler continued, "How's school going? You girls got let out already?"

"Oh, yeah, we did," another girl answered, smiling. "There's some Uni thing on today, so they let us out early. Awesome!"

"What's the Uni thing happening today?" Scott questioned, speaking for the first time. "We haven't heard anything about it." It was true: none of the Sprawl's news networks had mentioned anything about a Unitology event, even though EarthGov's technicians were always trying to find ways to crack the Church's secure networks.

"I don't know much about it," the girl said, "my sister just told me about it, and said it was gonna happen later today."

"The Uni teachers at school seemed pretty excited about it," the first girl to speak to them added.

"Right," Scott nodded, "thanks a lot for telling us this. We'll be sure to look into it after we've finished our patrol. Speaking of which…" he checked his helmet's chronometer display, and shifted his pulse rifle slightly in his arms, "we've got to get back to it, or Tiedemann will chew us out. Sorry, girls."

"Aww!" all the girls moaned simultaneously. "Are you really that overworked, officers?" the girl who responded with sarcasm before asked them.

"Sadly, we are," Tyler answered, trying to get in his remarks ahead of Scott. "Well," he said, making a show of hefting his pulse rifle to the girls, "another time, girls!"

"Wait!" the first girl called, before Scott and Tyler could walk another two metres. "What are your names? We never introduced ourselves."

Tyler turned his head towards Scott, as if he was asking permission. Despite his growing anxiety about lingering much too long to converse with a group of teenage schoolgirls, Scott shrugged as if it didn't matter. "I'm Sergeant Scott Fairbanks, and this is–"

"Corporal Darrell Tyler," Tyler finished for him.

"Cool!" the girl smiled. "I'm Beth, and this is Lauren–" she pointed to the girl who had mentioned the Unitologist event "–and Yvonne," pointing to the sarcastic girl. "But don't let us get you in trouble with Tiedemann," she continued, and gave the two security officers a cheery wave. "See you around!" With that, the group of schoolgirls continued to walk past them, and disappeared around the corner they had just come from.

Switching off his helmet's external speaker as they resumed their patrol, Scott commented, "Was there really a need for that, Tyler?", though without any real force behind it. He wasn't really particularly bothered by the whole exchange, and Tyler was already too good a friend for him to be very angry at him for such a trivial reason.

Tyler copied Scott's shrug of acceptance. "Why not? We're responsible for the community, after all. We might as well keep on good terms with them."

"Yeah, but…" Scott made an effort to suppress his laughter, "we don't have to go around doing _that_. Did you see the looks the other people were giving us? Hell, you should've seen the Unis' faces!" It was too much, and Scott burst out laughing – though nobody but Tyler could hear him.

"Hah, screw them," Tyler said, and promptly broke down into fits of laughter as well. The two of them kept laughing as they walked for some time, with none of the Sprawl's residents that they encountered able to hear them.

When the sounds of laughter echoing inside their helmets finally subsided, Scott let out a sigh, and looked around him. Their patrol route had taken them through several more hallways, and they were just exiting the residential complex they had been in to find themselves in the Concourse, one of the Sprawl's large variety of commercial and recreational complexes. It had an impressive arrangement of outlets catering to the lifestyles and needs of the inhabitants of the adjoining residential complex.

The shops and outlets of the Concourse weren't what impressed Scott, however; he'd seen much more breathtaking and grander megacomplexes in other sectors of the station. What did impress him was the panorama offered to shoppers by the large array of aerogel composite panes that spanned the two floors of the complex, which was seldom replicated elsewhere on the station due to engineering safety regulations.

From the window Scott had a wide view of the rest of the Sprawl and its complexes, which included several massive video displays that were used for public service announcements by the station's leader, Director Hans Tiedemann. Behind the sprawling complexes he could see the sturdy and unmoving solar transformer arrays that comprised Titan Station's Solar Array: once the station's primary source of energy, the Solar Array had now been decommissioned as a result of the recent breakthroughs by EarthGov's science divisions in the fields of fusion engineering. The Solar Array had thus been supplanted by a newly-installed helium-3-deuterium nuclear fusion reactor complex in the centre of the station, and while it contained an infinitely more complicated series and variety of components that had to be serviced by engineers regularly, it was still a far more efficient source of energy than the decommissioned Solar Array.

And behind all of that, one could just about see the gas giant that dwarfed the entire station – Saturn, in all of its gaseous, ringed glory – and sometimes, if the station's rotation, current position and orientation were right, a glimpse could be caught of the vast, black vacuum of space.

"Always makes you stop for a second, doesn't it?" Scott commented when he saw Tyler pausing, facing out towards the view.

"Yeah," he replied after a few seconds. "Makes you realize how insignificant we are."

"Compared to the rest of the galaxy, yeah." Scott let go of his pulse rifle for a second, and stretched his arms behind his back. "You know, even with CEC tearing up systems for every scrap of ore they can get their greedy hands on, we still haven't explored a smidgen of the Milky Way. Who knows what could be out there?"

"Not us, that's for sure," Tyler began, "and certainly not the CEC, thanks to those huge layoffs they've been having for like, what, the past _year_ now? Who else is going to map all of those systems for their own profit, let alone ours?" It was true: the Concordance Extraction Corporation had no competitors, and they were the only one with any real motivation to chart the star systems of the galaxy. That didn't mean that others didn't exist, though.

"EDF," Scott responded simply. "They'll do it, if CEC won't, if only to make sure their patrol ships won't run into an asteroid that blows their communications gear light-years out there."

"Hah, I guess you're right," Tyler acquiesced. "They do have the job of protecting us from any threats we might find out there, after all."

That last sentence twinged something in Scott's mind. Whether it was just simple curiosity, or possibly a deep-seated fear of the unknown, he didn't know. "Do _you_ think there's anything out there?" he questioned casually.

Tyler only scoffed. "I doubt it. But even if there is, we're not going to be the ones to have to deal with it."

"Famous last words, Tyler," Scott replied, unaware just how much that quote would apply to him, or how and why it would.

In the instant the words left his mouth, the order of Titan Station and its residents was shattered by the deafening sound of emergency alarms triggering. Everybody in the Concourse froze, as if they were incapable of registering the meaning of the blaring klaxons that echoed even in the wide space of the commercial and recreational complex.

But Scott and Tyler both registered it, and knew what it meant. Titan Station was under attack by internal hostiles.

"Famous last words, Fairbanks," Tyler echoed.

* * *

><p>AN: One of the things that fascinates me the most about stories, such as that of Dead Space, that centre on a supernatural inhuman force ravaging the natural human world (a flaky analogy, but accurate enough) is how the men and women of that human world defend themselves against that force. In most cases, these men and women are affiliated with the government, and as a force of authority their defense against the supernatural should be one of the strongest, if not the strongest. Yet time and time again, they are ineffectual in defending that which they have sworn to defend, being outclassed by a mere CEC engineer. (Admittedly, a badass CEC engineer.)

So, I decided to write a story that takes after the other side of the spectrum seen in the Dead Space universe, and write about the struggle of the Sprawl's security officers to hold the line against the threat posed by both the Necromorphs and Isaac Clarke.

This is pretty much the first story I've written in this sort of genre and setting, so please feel free to offer any comments and advice that you can give. Updates will be sporadic, but hopefully frequent; I'm as eager to see where this story goes as much as you are.


	2. Emergency

**Emergency**

The administrative control room of Titan Station was alight with frenzied activity. Technicians and staff scurried between their desks and consoles, crossing between the carefully arranged rows of holographic computer interfaces to request and deliver reports, advice, queries, orders. All of this was for the overreaching purpose of identifying and taking control over the emergency situation that had enveloped Titan Station, as if the constant haste of movements and discussions was some measure of compensating for the staff's inadequacy in their knowledge and ability to take action based on it.

By contrast, those technicians and staff that remained in no more than a single position, most notably the security officers who stood arranged around the room, appeared to be steadfast, resolute and in control of the situation. It was a false image, created solely because for whatever reason they had decided to face the emergency on their own, without the support of other people.

It was into this chaos that Hans Tiedemann, Director of Operations aboard Titan Station, entered with a full entourage of additional staff and security officers, and a grim and dark expression upon his face, as if he already knew the nature of the emergency on his station.

"Director Tiedemann, sir," the officers guarding the door saluted, but Hans waved them aside, and strode up the staircase leading to his command desk at the head of the room. The security officers escorting him immediately moved to reinforce the already substantial guard presence in the room. His other personal staff remained behind him as he reached his desk and activated the interface, awaiting his orders.

Hans wasted no time in giving them. "All of you, get to your stations," he ordered, his voice carrying across the room in spite of how low and controlled it was. "Get me status on the station's infrastructure, our security teams, and the evacuation shuttles _now_. I want a complete status assessment up in ninety seconds."

"Yes, sir," they all replied, and moved off to their respective designated stations.

Taking his seat in front of the now-activated holographic interface, Hans went through the tedious but necessary process of authorizing his access and control of Titan Station's administrative functions. It took him fifteen seconds for the computer to accept his credentials and authorization and priority codes, and only then was he able to assume control of the situation.

The first thing he did was to access the file that contained the pre-written protocols for the appropriate actions to take in an emergency. While the file covered virtually any contingency that might be expected to befall a space station, particularly such as major one as Titan Station, most of the measures that it described were useless if they weren't applied to the correct situation. It was the job of Hans' staff to assist his decisions by identifying the nature of the current emergency.

"Sir?" The voice broke his concentration, and he looked away from the protocol file to see a technician holding a holopad standing in front of his desk. The credentials on her uniform identified her as Junior Data Analyst Bronson.

She couldn't have been over twenty-five. "What is it, Bronson?" Hans inquired, checking his chronometer. Thirty-five seconds and counting.

"Sir," she began, "we've been able to identify the sectors that seem to have been affected by the emergency." As she talked, she tapped keys on her holopad to bring up the relevant information, and Hans did likewise with his computer to establish an interface. Shortly enough, the information was presented on both Hans' own display and the large overhead displays at the front of the room, allowing the techs and staff to easily reference it if they required it.

"As you can see," Bronson explained, "the sectors that we've confirmed have been affected include the mines, the public sector, the CEC facility, and the medical center. We're still working on getting an accurate assessment of the damage, but we're seeing a lot of overloaded or short-circuited electronics, and we've got several incidences of breached integrity and decompression in several sectors of the station." All of this was being displayed to the entire room, and Hans could see that several of the technicians winced when they saw the extent of the damage to the station. He likely would have, too, but years of political gesturing and debating against other high-ranking EarthGov officials allowed him to maintain an image of being concerned by the situation, but not to the point that his decision-making abilities were hampered in any way.

"What about the nature of the threat?" he asked, refusing to mince words and call it the emergency.

"We're still working on that, sir," Bronson replied. "We're pulling up video logs now, trying to reference and identify them." She paused, checking her holopad as if unsure of a detail, then added, "According to our logs, the first appearances of the threat were in the mines. There was a disturbance logged there this morning; a security team was dispatched to deal with it."

"Hell." Hans ran a hand over his now-bald head, and checked his chronometer again. Sixty seconds and counting. "Identify the threat as soon as possible. We need to know how to respond, and from the damage it's already caused we have to do it soon."

"Yes, sir," the analyst acknowledged him, and turned to move back to her desk.

She'd already left Hans' mind, but her report hadn't. "General," Hans beckoned.

A man wearing a security RIG, his swept-aside black hair and stern features exposed by his lack of a helmet, turned in his seat to face the Director. He was General of Security Johnson Machette, the commanding officer responsible for security aboard Titan Station. His authority as a result of his responsibility was massive and far-reaching, second only to Hans himself.

"What, Director?" Machette replied, carrying that insubordinate streak in his voice that Hans had learned to forgive, if only for the man's efficiency and commitment in carrying out his duty.

"This morning, a security team was sent out to deal with a disturbance in the mines," Hans stated. "Who was the officer in command of the team?"

The General didn't need to consult his computer's logs. "Colonel Victor Bartlett was in command," he answered. "His last report said that he and his team had deployed in two squads and were moving into the mines to secure them."

"Get in contact with him," Hans ordered. "We need to know what happened down there, and why."

"Routing will take a couple of seconds," Machette remarked, even as he moved to comply.

"Just get it done," Hans said, putting emphasis in his voice.

"Yeah, yeah." While Machette hit keys on his computer, Hans checked on both his chronometer and his staff's progress. Seventy-five seconds and counting, and still working away frantically with the data they had to meet the ninety second deadline that he had imposed.

"Got him," Machette said, waving at Hans. As Hans authorized the routing of Machette's communications to his computer, the General switched on his pickup and started talking. "Colonel Bartlett, this is General Machette. Acknowledge."

For a moment nothing happened; then static emerged from the speakers, and a video feed opened, showing a man whose eyes were bloodshot and his features haggard. In the background, Hans identified the cabin of an EarthGov Sentry-class police gunship. So Bartlett likely wasn't in any immediate danger.

"General, this is Colonel Bartlett," the man replied. "Communication acknowledged."

"Give me a sitrep, Colonel," Machette demanded. "What's the status of your mission?"

Bartlett seemed to need to take a few seconds to draw breath before he could respond to his superior's demand. When he did respond, he stared straight into the camera in an attempt to meet the eyes of Hans and Machette. "The mission is fucked, sir," he stated bluntly. "We tried to contain them, but they overwhelmed us and tore my men to shreds."

"Contain _what_? What threat did you encounter?" As the General continued to demand answers from the obviously battle-shocked Colonel, a window opened in his interface, showing a neatly tabulated list of the security officers that had accompanied Colonel Bartlett into the mines. The list displayed all of the last known RIG logs received from the officers, detailing a variety of gruesome injuries that had all resulted in the same thing.

**User Integrity 0%.**

**User Vital Functions Terminated.**

"The most fucked up thing you ever saw," Bartlett declared. "A Class One biological threat. Creatures formed from humans that kill people and make more of themselves out of us. That's what happened to my men. All of them." He took a breath, and added, "Except one."

"What do you mean, except one?" Machette asked, having lost the edge of anger in his voice, but Hans's mind was on a much more crucial and horrifying matter. A Class One biological threat that killed people and formed more of itself out of them. Hans had read through all of the entries in EarthGov's database of potential threats that could endanger Titan Station, and only one fit that description.

Knowing he would dread the answer, Hans input the search parameters into his computer.

Eighty-five seconds and counting.

The search turned up a single entry.

_Necromorphs_.

Mortification slowly spread like liquid nitrogen in Hans' blood as he scrolled down the file, renewing his memory of the malformed human monstrosities that were what Colonel Bartlett had encountered in the mines. The images and logs attached by EarthGov personnel whose names remained classified, even to his security clearance, were just proof that such a horror was real, and was threatening _his_ station.

Below and in front of him, Titan Station's administrative staff elicited collective gasps and whispers of horror and fear as relevance-filtered auto-sorting algorithms dutifully routed the information to the room's overhead displays. Even the security officers, their expressions hidden behind their polarized faceplates, seemed to visibly balk as they registered the data in front of them, their pulse rifles trembling in their arms.

Only Hans, who had been somewhat prepared for the revelation, and Machette in all of his maverick personality and approach to his duty seemed to retain their rationality.

"Shit," Machette growled as he read the data on his own computer. "I don't know if our security teams are equipped to deal with the threat. Most of our officers are on patrol in the public sector, but they're not effectively equipped for warfare or containment."

"What's your recommendation, then?" Hans asked, knowing that Machette would already have some solution for his grievances.

"We'll have to enact a holding and containment procedure," the General explained, tapping keys on his computer to bring up a tactical and strategic display of Titan Station. The holographic interface showed a three-dimensional schematic of the station, which included both the public and government sectors, the mines and smelters under the government sector, the transport hubs and the docking ports on the rim of the station. "Currently the majority of Beta division is deployed throughout the public sector, with several squads from Alpha division guarding the atrium of government sector, and we have assets from Gamma division on patrol inside of our control space. I've already ordered that incoming traffic is to hold their position until further notice, and anyone who tries to dock without authorization is going to join the ranks of astronomy as a radioactive navigational hazard."

Hans nodded with approval.

"Our main priority is the transport hubs and the docking ports. I'm moving squads now to secure the facilities and make sure they remain functional. I've also ordered several of Gamma's gunships to launch and orbit the station in order to provide tactical support for Beta division. Then I'm calling up Alpha's off-duty personnel, and having the whole division deploy throughout government sector. They're to secure the entire sector, and keep it that way until we've dealt with the threat."

Machette looked up from his display to Hans. "But all of it is useless if I don't know what our objectives are."

Hans had been expecting this question, and had already formulated his response based on EarthGov security protocols and his own decisions. "What's our security presence in the medical centre?" he countered Machette.

"We have several squads in there already," Machette replied immediately. "Colonel Bartlett is also en route now, ETA seven minutes."

"Excellent," Hans said. "Have Bartlett take command when he arrives, and supervise the disposal procedures to prevent our Marker research from being comp–"

"Bartlett doesn't seem to want to cooperate," Machette interrupted before Hans could finish. "He claims he has a higher priority objective that he must complete in order to facilitate disposal procedures."

A glower manifested on Hans' face, but his manner remained calm and controlled. "And what objective might that be, General?"

"Apparently, one of the members of his team has gone rogue." Machette pulled up a file. "Sergeant Gabe Weller. He was assigned to lead Bravo squad, and apparently he was the only other survivor. His RIG's signal confirms he's alive, and he seems to be heading for the medical centre in Bravo squad's gunship. Bartlett had a head start, so he'll probably reach the medical centre before Weller does," Machette added.

Hans' glare intensified. While a rogue security officer represented a palpable threat to his operations, he was running out of time to make his decisions; the decisions that could alter the fate of Titan Station. "I don't have time for this bullshit," he snapped. "I've issued the order to initiate disposal procedures, and Bartlett can go after this Weller if he thinks he's a threat. But in the meantime, we need to focus on the security of our station.

"As of this moment, I am declaring a station-wide evacuation, effective immediately."

Whatever Machette might have been about to reply caught in his throat as he heard Hans's words. A look of surprise, then suspicion, as Hans glared him down, daring the General to challenge him. They both knew the ramifications of what he had said, and judging by the stillness and silence amongst his personal staff, they did too.

Finally, Machette folded his arms and sighed. "I know why you're doing this, Director." His tone betrayed no resentment at the decision Hans had made. "If I were you, I might even have done it too. But I'm not, and you're the one who decides whether we all live or die." With a wry smile, Machette snapped a salute. "God be with you, Director." And with that, he turned back in his seat to face the holographic interface, and began issuing orders to the security officers under his command.

Hans breathed a private sigh of relief. For all his dedication to his duty, Machette's opinions and attitudes remained a mystery to him, and he'd had little idea of how the General would react to his declaration.

Ignoring the looks that he knew his staff were giving him behind his back, Hans typed commands into his computer to enable a station-wide broadcast. He briefly considered his words, then he cleared his throat and enabled the transmission.

"Attention all residents and security officers of Titan Station. This is Director Tiedemann. A station-wide emergency situation is now in effect. In accordance with the Titan Station Civic Code, I am hereby declaring martial law, effective immediately.

"I am also declaring a station-wide evacuation. All residents are ordered to move to the nearest evacuation route immediately. Security officers will police the evacuation. Public order is expected to be maintained during the evacuation. Any residents found looting will be considered to be engaged in an act of sabotage, and will be shot on sight as such."

"All residents are ordered to move to the nearest evacuation route immediately.

"This is not a drill.

"Tiedemann out."

* * *

><p>AN: While Tiedemann and the rest of Government Sector's personnel spend most of the game sitting it out in Government Sector, they still play a large role in the events of it, as evident by Tiedemann's constant attempts to eliminate Isaac Clarke. Though he will take a backseat compared to the others on the front line battling the Necromorphs, I'm hoping to get some good exchanges out of Tiedemann and his staff.

It's not exactly clear where the timelines of Dead Space 2 and Severed converge, so I gave it my best guess. I don't think I'm going to do anything with Gabe or Vic though, since we already know what happens with and to them and they don't seem to have any significant effect on the rest of the storyline (as far as the Sprawl is concerned).

I'm also happy I got a review. While I probably won't respond personally to every one I get, I will to this one. I'm glad you think my story has potential, and I'd love it if you felt free to post your own story regardless of mine. And if you think copyright is an issue, think about what our stories are about =P.

Thanks for reading, and please feel free to review!


	3. Encounter

**Encounter**

"This is not a drill.

"Tiedemann out."

As soon as the Director's announcement had ended, the residents of the Sprawl finally began to register what had happened, and in the absence of the emergency klaxons' wailing, they began to react to it. Some remained frozen in shock, still unable to comprehend. Most began to murmur and comment amongst themselves, either dismissing or hyping the emergency. Still others broke into a panic, too fearful to believe in the Director's instructions and assurances.

After they had come to terms with events, the residents naturally turned to the ones who were most likely to be informed about the emergency and what was happening. Within seconds, the security officers were mobbed by crowds of frightened residents, demanding answers for questions such as why Tiedemann had declared martial law or an evacuation, why there was an emergency in the first, what had caused it, and many other questions drowned out by the collective shouting of residents. Those residents that weren't demanding answers were being trampled and crushed by others, and those with the presence of mind to start moving towards the evacuation exits had no hope of moving through the scrum of bodies.

In other words, the exact opposite of what Director Tiedemann wanted.

"Shit!" Corporal Tyler swore as he and Scott were forced to back up towards the aerogel composite panes of the Concourse by the mass of residents pressing in on them. "If we don't get these guys under control fast, they're gonna throw us over the edge!"

"I know!" Scott responded, seeing a few men wearing Unitology trinkets trying to lunge at him, but for at least a few seconds were restrained by the crowed. "We have to intimidate them, scare them into backing down. If we can do that, we can give them orders."

"Then let's do it!"

In a synchronized movement, the two of them abruptly took several steps back, giving them a metre or two of space. Both of them adopted a combat-ready stance, activated their G-boots to give them stability, switched on their external speakers, and aimed their pulse rifles into the crowd, laser sights and flashlights set to their brightest settings; and at Scott's instruction, the same demand came from both of them, "_All of you, stand down _now!"

Some residents heard it, and remembered their own weakness against authority, meekly stopping what they were doing only to be pushed over by the residents who either couldn't hear or didn't care about the combined demand.

"_Stand down _now, _or we _will_ use force!_"

That caught the attention of the rest of the residents, civilians who suddenly realized what they were dealing with. The pulse rifles that the two security officers were carrying suddenly looked very dangerous, and nobody wanted to be on the operational end of one.

A single Unitologist went for it anyway, shouting curses at EarthGov as she leaped at Scott, trying to dislodge him and send him over the railing. But his G-boots kept him firmly planted in place, and as the woman realized her assault on the officer had no effect, Scott punched her with his left hand and shoved her away with his pulse rifle.

The woman cursed, rubbing her jaw and seething with anger. "Oppressive filth!" she raged. "EarthGov trash! You will never know the glory of the Marker!"

"No I don't, ma'am," Tyler retorted. "But I would be more than happy to send you to meet Altman yourself."

"Threats! Is that all you can do? Come, unite with me against this oppression!" she appealed to the other residents. But most of them had already backed down in the face of Tiedemann's authority, and those few considering aiding her took note of the pulse rifles sweeping in their faces, and decided to not risk being shot.

"That's better," Scott said to the crowd of residents, and lowered his rifle as a gesture of goodwill. "You've heard Tiedemann's orders, move to the nearest evacuation route now. Remain calm and proceed in an orderly manner. This is not a drill." To demonstrate where the nearest evacuation route was, Tyler used his RIG's pathfinder to streak a bright blue line onto the floor, allowing the whole crowd to see.

A few seconds passed; slowly, the crowd of residents in front of them acquiesced to Scott's orders, and began moving along the bright blue line with varying degrees of reluctance. After making sure that everyone was moving, Scott and Tyler both joined the crowd, positioning themselves close to the front so that they could redirect the line of residents if they needed to.

As they walked alongside the residents, a flicker of holographic blue light and a distinctive tone warned Scott of an incoming audio transmission. In the brief seconds available to him, Scott switched the settings of his communicator so that the audio would only play inside his and Tyler's helmets, excluding any of the surrounding residents from the conversation that was about to take place.

"I bet it's the Captain," Tyler muttered, just before the voice of their commanding officer crackled out of their communicators, "Sergeant Fairbanks, this is Captain Lewis. Acknowledge."

"Communications acknowledged, Captain," Scott replied, adjusting the volume slightly.

"Listen up, you two," the Captain began. "As you know, the Director has declared an evacuation. General Machette has specified our strategy to be holding and containment."

"Holding and containment of what, sir?" Scott questioned, remembering that he still knew nothing about the emergency.

"According to the General, we're up against a Class One biological threat. It seems to have originated from the mines, and it's now spreading throughout the public sector. I don't have any details, so don't ask for them."

"What are our orders, sir?" Tyler asked, checking the pulse rifle in his hands.

"We've been ordered to secure all the transport hubs and docking ports, so as to facilitate the evacuation. You and the citizens with you are moving towards Transport Hub B-4; we're already deploying there and securing the hub, so when you get here, link up with us and await further orders."

"Understood, Captain," Scott and Tyler said together.

"Good to hear. Captain Lewis out."

The slight background fuzzing of the transmission ended, and Scott and Tyler instinctively looked to each other, even though their polarized faceplates prevented them from seeing each others' reactions. After a moment, Tyler burst into laughter, and Scott found himself joining him, though they quickly stopped and became serious again.

"It's amazing how 'Class One biological threat' tells us a lot and just about nothing at all," Tyler remarked as they resumed their leading of the residents.

"I'm just glad we haven't encountered it yet," Scott replied, even as he ordered a fast diagnostic of his RIG's systems. "We'll be a lot safer, whatever it is, when we've linked up with the rest of our unit."

"Yeah, I hope we reach them quick," Tyler said, just as a shout came from the front of the line.

"Officers! Over here!" a man was shouting, and the residents seemed to be slowing down and halting in their tracks.

"The hell happened?" Tyler said, breaking into a fast jog to reach the front of the line where several residents seemed to be crowding around a door.

"What's going on here?" Scott asked as he reached the group of residents around the door.

"This door won't open," the man answered, gesturing to the door. Scott could immediately see that the door lacked a control holograph in its centre. "The power must be screwed up."

"Let me see," Scott said, the residents moving out of the way as he walked to the door.

Tyler turned around to keep watch on the residents behind them, who seemed to be growing anxious and nervous. "Remain calm," he told the line of residents. "It's just a door malfunction."

Scott was no engineer, but his technical training taught him enough to open the cover of the adjacent power unit and run a fast diagnostic. The cause of the door's malfunction was quickly apparent: one of the power nodes in the unit had expired, causing a short circuit to occur.

"Damn," he muttered. "Tyler, you've got our emergency power nodes?"

"I've got a couple here," Tyler replied.

"Hand me one, so I can fix this power unit."

Letting go of his pulse rifle for a moment, Tyler reached into his RIG's storage spaces with his left hand and brought out a CEC-branded power node. "Here you go," he said, tossing it over to Scott, who caught it easily with his kinesis module. "You'd better hurry up, this crowd's starting to get nervous."

Scott nodded, and turned back to the power unit, searching for the switches to release the seating of the shorted-out power node.

Before he could start fixing the power unit, screams began to erupt from the back of the crowd of residents. In that moment, as he lost his concentration and turned around, any sense of order the crowd might have possessed was immediately discarded as panic spread from the rear to the front. Tyler demanded the residents to remain calm, but there were no people left who were still calm.

"What the fuck is going on?" Scott shouted, his amplified voice barely audible over the increasing screams of terror. None of the residents seemed to hear him, running whichever way they could that was away from the dead end of the malfunctioned door.

Then several residents ran around the corner and into the hallway, heading straight towards him and Tyler. Scott recognized them instantly: Beth, Lauren and Yvonne.

Their smiles of glee and flirtation had been replaced by expressions of utter fear. "Scott! Darrell!" they cried as they collided with the two officers. "Help us!"

Scott pushed Beth aside, trying to see past the chaos of panicking residents. "Help you from what? What's happening?"

"The monsters!" Lauren wailed, still clinging to Tyler as he tried to dislodge her. "Save us from them, Darrell!"

"What the shit are you–" Tyler began, only to stop as the source of the schoolgirls' terror rounded the corner.

It was humanoid, and it was even wearing the remnants of human clothing, but Scott knew on sight that it wasn't human. Its face was twisted into a rictus, with sharp teeth protruding from the mouth, and its eyes glowing a deep red colour. But more frightening than its facial features were the two extra arms emerging from its shoulders, long and thin and ending in a single sharp scythe on each arm. Its actual arms seemed to be fused to its torso, with only the forearms visible.

As Scott saw it, the monster casually swung one of its scythe arms, effortlessly decapitating a resident with the misfortune of being close to it. It turned around, and seemed to catch sight of him and Tyler.

For a brief moment, Scott understood real terror.

Then it roared, and broke into a charge towards them. Without hesitation Scott and Tyler raised their pulse rifles and opened fire. Pulse rounds filled the air as the humanoid monster staggered from the impact of the rounds, but it remained standing in the face of a barrage that would have taken down any human target.

"Shit!" Tyler cursed. "This fucker's not going down!"

"Take its legs off!" Scott shouted in a sudden burst of inspiration. "Maybe we can immobilize it!" He stopped firing for a second to adjust his aim, and in that second the monster resumed its charge. Laser sights lined up on its legs, Scott fired again.

The pulse rounds punched through the monster's legs, and they suddenly gave way and separated from the monster's body. But even as it fell to the ground, it didn't stop. Using its arms to drag itself, the monster continued to crawl towards them.

Then the combined fire of Scott and Tyler severed its arms, and the monster finally stopped. As Scott ceased fire and loaded a new magazine into his pulse rifle, Tyler approached it and performed a G-stomp on its torso, reducing it to a bloody pulp.

"Goddamn," Tyler said as he reloaded his pulse rifle. "What the hell was that thing?"

"No idea, but it's gotta be the threat," Scott responded. The sounds of sobbing and sniffling prompted him to turn around, and he saw the three schoolgirls cowering next to the malfunctioned door. "Beth?" he entreated. "Are you alright?"

"No," came her answer, weak and quavering. "Those things…they killed us…whatever those monsters are. We're the only…ones who survived." With a sob, Beth stumbled forward and fell onto Scott, her arms wrapping tightly around his waist.

"Shit," Tyler repeated, Lauren and Yvonne both clinging to him as he covered the corridor. "What the hell are we going to do now?"

"Same as before," Scott answered. "Link up with the rest of our unit, dig in, and hold until we get new orders." Without waiting for the sarcastic reply, Scott dialled a frequency into his communicator. "Captain Lewis, this is Sergeant Fairbanks. Acknowledge."

There was no response for a moment, then more static than before crackled into his ear. For some reason, Scott allowed the transmission to be broadcast out of his helmet's external speaker; most probably, simply because there were no residents left that they could cause panic in with bad news. "Sergeant Fairbanks, I'm hearing you. What's happened?"

"Great to hear you're still alive, Captain," Tyler remarked. Scott suspected he was using sarcasm to calm his nerves, and he didn't blame his patrol partner.

"We got blocked by a shorted-out door, and before we could get it fixed the _threat_ showed up." Scott practically spat the word, though he wasn't angry. "All the residents panicked and fled, and then we encountered one of them."

"And then what?"

"Then we killed it," Tyler put in with a note of triumph.

"We killed it," Scott repeated.

"Well, I'm sure glad to hear that those bastards, whatever they are, can be killed," Lewis remarked. "How did you kill it?"

"We shot it in the torso, but it didn't go down, so we shot its legs out," Scott told the Captain. "That slowed it down, but it kept coming, so we kept shooting it, and it seemed to die when we shot its arms off. Then we made sure the thing was _dead_."

"That fits with what I've heard from the General," Lewis replied. "He says the creatures can be killed if we shoot off their limbs. Good work, Sergeant." Without a pause, he went on, "What's your current situation?"

"We've got several survivors here," Scott answered, "but everyone else has fled, and we have reason to believe they're either dead or beyond rescue at this point. We haven't fixed the door yet, and from what I can tell–" He quickly brought up his schematic of Titan Station, and checked it. "–there's no good reroute available. We'll have to fix it and continue this way."

"Well, fix that door, and get your asses over here. The threat hasn't reached this hub yet, but we'll need every man we can get if–"

"Oh fuck me!" Tyler shouted suddenly. "There's more of these fuckers coming!"

Scott looked towards the end of the corridor, and sure enough, more of the humanoid monsters had appeared. While most of them looked similar to the first one they had killed, one of them was different to the others. It was bulkier in all respects, and it didn't have any extra arms or blades. But when it saw the two standing security officers and the three cowering schoolgirls, it stopped its movement, and reared its head back.

Scott didn't need any helpful information from General Machette to recognize the threat.

"Fire in the hole!" he shouted, activating the SWS motorized pulse rifle's secondary fire mode. In a process that lasted less than a second, twenty-five pulse rounds were collated together by an intense electro-gravity impulse, a derivative of the technology used in the rifle's mass accelerators. Once the rounds had been fused together, the resulting projectile was launched from the rifle's over-barrel launcher at the group of monsters at the end of the corridor.

Before the monsters could react, the quasi-grenade detonated in their midst, reducing all but one of them to a bloody pulp. As Tyler aimed at and shot off the arms of the remaining slashing monster, Scott saw a liquid substance pouring out of the bulky monster's remains, and how it seemed to be slowly eating away at the pulp that it landed on. An acid of some sort.

"Still there, Captain?" he asked.

"Still here, Sergeant," Lewis responded. "I take it you neutralized the threat?"

"That's affirmative, Captain," Scott said. "Be advised, there seems to be different variations of hostiles. The one we encountered just now appears to have some sort of acidic attack."

"Acknowledged, and good work again, Fairbanks. Now get the hell out of there already."

"Roger that, sir. Sergeant Fairbanks out." Having reloaded his pulse rifle again, Scott turned to Tyler. "You heard the Captain, Tyler."

"I sure did," he replied, gesturing to the door. "You've got more training than me, you fix the door. I'll cover our backs." With a dramatic hefting of his pulse rifle, Tyler stepped into the middle of the hallway, ready to fire as soon as he sighted another monster.

"I'm trusting you, Tyler," Scott told him as he started to move towards the malfunctioned door, then realized that Beth was still clinging to him helplessly. He sighed, but tried to maintain his calm. "Beth, please let go. I need to fix the door so we can get out of here."

The teenager sniffled, but she obeyed, looking up at him with red eyes. "Please, Scott…" she whimpered, "save me. You're the only one who can."

"That's what I'm trying to do, Beth," he assured her as he reached the open power unit and peered inside, placing his pulse rifle on the ground and finding the release switches for the shorted power node's seating. With a few flicks of his fingers, the power node was released, and Scott pulled it out with his kinesis module and threw it away. Taking out the fresh power node Tyler had given him, he slid it into the socket and began flicking the switches again.

As he seated the new power node into its socket, he heard Tyler's warning from behind him. "Here they come!" his partner shouted. "Eat some of this, motherfuckers!" As Tyler fired his pulse rifle at targets, Scott hit the activation switch for the power unit.

"_Power unit activated,"_ a computerized female voice explained coolly from a nearby public announcement speaker. _"Running integrity diagnostic. Stand by._

"_Integrity diagnostic complete. Malfunctioning power node replaced. Circuit integrity verified. Initializing power routing sequence. Stand by."_

"Goddamn it," Scott growled. "Keep it up, Tyler!" he shouted as he picked up his own pulse rifle and added to the barrage of pulse rounds.

"I gotta reload, Fairbanks!" Tyler shouted back.

"Do it, I'll cover you!" An assorted group of slashing and acidic monsters rounded the corner, and Scott took the liberty of softening them up with another quasi-grenade. The resulting detonation took out all but two of the group, and one of them was a slasher reduced to crawling. The other monster, one of the acidic ones, remained standing, and it reared its head back to retaliate.

Before he could shoot its limbs off, the monster regurgitated a stream of the acidic substance directly at him. He barely dropped and rolled away in time as the acid washed over his head, barely missing him.

"_Power routing sequence initialized. Running integrity diagnostic. Stand by."_

"Shit, Fairbanks!" Tyler exclaimed, shooting at the acid monster and managing to blow off its arms in a wash of the acid. The acid promptly ate away at the rest of the monster, and it slumped to the floor. The crawling slasher was caught by the acid, and it too was halted in its tracks.

"How's your ammo?" Scott asked as he got to his feet, checking his pulse rifle's readout. Twenty-three rounds remaining in the magazine.

"I've got enough, but we'll run out if we have to stay here any longer!"

"_Integrity diagnostic complete. Circuit integrity verified. Power unit integrity verified. Normal functions restored."_ And with that, the control hologram on the door reading **Open?** lit up, and the sight of it was all too welcome to the pair of them.

"Get the girls!" Scott ordered Tyler. "I'll cover us!" He shot the limbs off of a slasher coming around the corner, and reloaded his magazine just as another group of monsters appeared.

As he opened fire, aiming to take out the acidic monsters first, Tyler opened the door and swept the corridor beyond, checking for any more monsters. "Clear!" he shouted, and grabbed the closest girl, Lauren, and started dragging her through the door.

The acid spewing from the puker's severed limbs made contact with most of the other monsters, slowing them down and dealing damage to them. But several managed to avoid the acidic bile, and began to charge at the pair of them.

"Get the last one, we've got to get through the door now!" Tyler called to Scott, hauling Yvonne through the doorway. Scott nodded, and grabbed onto Beth's arm with his left hand, continuing to fire at the advancing horde of monsters with his pulse rifle as he half-dragged and half-led her towards the relative safety of the next corridor.

As soon as he and Beth were through the door, Tyler hit the controls to close and lock down the door, keeping the monsters in there for at least the next few minutes.

No sooner was relative safety realized than the shock and reality of what had just happened finally caught up with them. With a sudden loss of will, the two Titan Station Security officers collapsed to the floor, exhausted.

* * *

><p>AN: I appear to be using the words "seem" and "as" a lot, I don't know why it perturbs me.

I'm a little dissatisfied with the ending of this chapter, but I'm not going to fix it because my motivation for working on this story is extending the plot, and rewriting sections just because they seem sub-par to me doesn't help that.

If you do have any comments about it, though, please let me know.

I really got nothing to talk about for this one, so thanks for reading!


	4. Deployment

**Deployment**

Commander Matthew Ferris sat belted into his G-seat, manipulating the keys and displays on his holographic interface while he waited. Beside him, his co-pilot was doing the same, but he could see that she also was drinking coffee, no doubt laced with stims, out of a G-flask. Apparently the sudden declarations of emergency, martial law, evacuation, and deployment had caught her unprepared, while he'd received his orders after he'd already gone on-shift at the docks. And when an order was issued directly by General Machette, veteran of six intra-system conflicts and commander of Titan Station Security, delaying in its execution was ill-advised.

A resonant chime told him that the gunship's diagnostics were complete. The ubiquitous digital female voice of Titan Station confirmed it for him, _"__Integrity __diagnostic __complete. __Ship __systems __integrity __verified.__"_

At the same time, the man wearing an engineering RIG Matthew could see on his video link nodded in agreement. "All systems are showing green," he said. "Gunship is spaceworthy."

The computer finished, _"__Ready __for __launch.__"_

"Thanks, Condor," Lieutenant Andrea Holman, Matthew's co-pilot and comrade-at-arms, replied to the engineer. She took a last gulp of coffee from her G-flask and secured it in a holder next to her seat, and turned to face him. "I guess this is it then, Matthew."

A laugh escaped from him. "Don't worry, Andrea," he said, reaching his gloved hand out to her. "We'll make it out of this one too."

"I'm sure we will," she agreed, giving his hand a quick squeeze before she returned to her section of the holographic interface.

Matthew smiled at her, then he ran a final check of his G-belts and his control configurations. When he was ready, he took a deep breath, and gave a thumbs-up to the engineer, who nodded and began tapping the commands to launch the gunship into his interface.

A dull rumble began to vibrate through the hull as the Sentry-class gunship's thrust drives ignited, slowly building up in power. At the same time, the docking port's airlock chamber disengaged from the gunship's dock, retracting back into its secure configuration.

As the gunship slowly lifted out of the docking port, the man wearing the engineering RIG raised a hand in farewell. "It's all out of my hands now, Commander," Senior Engineer Condor said cheerily. "Good luck out there."

"Good luck to you too, Engineer," Matthew returned. "We'll see you when we're back in dock."

"I'll hold you to that," Condor grinned, and then the video link was terminated.

Without the distraction of Condor's banter, Matthew was aware of an intangible fluttering in his stomach as the gunship's pre-programmed autopilot routines used navigation thrusters to move itself past the point where its powerful thrust drives could be utilized without risking damage to the docking ports or any other station systems. Beside him, he could hear Andrea humming to herself to distract herself from the feeling, but he preferred to endure the brief discomfort. Space conflicts required far more punishing maneuvers than simple undocking, and it reminded him of the responsibility he held as a serving officer of the Earth Government.

Men and women who braved the cold, dark vast vacuum of space for the sake of their careers shared that responsibility.

The navigation thrusters cut out, and the queasy sensation in Matthew's stomach eased as the gunship was left drifting into a stable holding path. _"__Undocking __complete,__"_ the computer announced unnecessarily. _"__Holding __path __assumed. __Awaiting __navigational __input.__"_

With a few taps of the keys, Matthew established an audio transmission link with Titan Station Space Control. "Control, this is Gamma Sixteen," he spoke into the pickup fixed under his chin. "We've launched from the station and are awaiting further orders."

The reply was fast in returning. "Gamma Sixteen, this is Control," a gruff man sitting in the administrative control room answered. "You have been designated to support the elimination of a potential saboteur and terrorist on board Titan Station. His name is Isaac Clarke, and he is considered by EarthGov to be a highly armed and dangerous fugitive."

Matthew quirked an eyebrow at Andrea in surprise, who responded with a shrug. He certainly hadn't been expecting this type of assignment. He had thought that he and Andrea would have been assigned to assist the evacuations efforts being made all over the station, or even deployed to enforce the blockade of Titan Station that General Machette had ordered not thirty minutes ago. Instead, they were being assigned to hunt down a single individual on board the station – search and destroy, as it was called.

"EarthGov considers Clarke's elimination to be a Class One priority," Control continued. "He escaped from solitary confinement in Titan Memorial Medical Center at approximately 1127 hours this morning. We believe he is currently located in the Cassini Towers, and is making his way to what appears to be his accomplice. Based on the attempts to triangulate their transmissions, Clarke's accomplice would appear to be a Unitologist."

A growl escaped from Matthew when he heard that classification. Like most of those serving in Titan Station Security, he disliked the Unitologist population of the station. At best, EarthGov tolerated their parasitic and encroaching existence. But they'd pushed their luck too far when they'd lit up incendiaries and attacked the security officers attempting to quell a riot in the public sector, and had the temerity to blame the security officers for the whole incident. Matthew hadn't had any friends in the unfortunate front line of officers – most spacefaring officers tended to not associate with those on the ground – but he still took the resulting casualties of that incident as an attack on the very government he had committed himself to serving, and had anybody asked him he would gladly have taken the opportunity for payback on those fanatic bastards.

From what he could see, Andrea felt much the same as him. A glance at her sitting in her G-seat and glowering at the holographic display for no other reason confirmed it for him.

"Your orders are to fly an observational patrol path over the sector Clarke is believed to be located in, and assist in triangulating his position. If you detect him, you are authorized to engage with maximum force, regardless of any collateral damage that may occur. Isaac Clarke must not be allowed to escape from Titan Station.

"Flight vector for observational patrol path follows.

"Confirm your understanding of these orders."

"Receiving orders loud and clear, Control," Matthew answered automatically. "Moving now to comply. Gamma Sixteen out."

As soon as the transmission link had ended, Andrea turned in her G-seat to face Matthew. "I don't get it," she said, a mild confusion on her face. "Why are they sending us out into space just to deal with some terrorist on the station?"

Matthew copied her shrug in response to her question. "We're a lot more maneuverable out here than a security team on the station," he reasoned. "We're also a lot more powerful. If we do find our target, we can kill him easily with a single burst." He knew this was true: pulse gatling guns were the staple armament employed by Sentry-class gunships, and their high calibre and rate of fire could easily shred an unprotected civilian shuttle, let alone a human wearing even one of the latest prototype combat RIGs. For stopping a single terrorist confined aboard a space station, a Sentry-class gunship was plain overkill.

The question was why General Machette, or even Director Tiedemann, had decided the deployment of a Sentry-class gunship against a single terrorist was necessary.

Obviously, the fact that Isaac Clarke, whoever he was, had been assigned a Class One priority termination order was the reason for it, but that simply raised more questions that the designation of _terrorist_ didn't cover. Most prominently, exactly what crimes Isaac Clarke had committed and been charged with, and why he was considered to be such a threat to EarthGov.

He didn't waste time questioning his orders, however. Even as he considered the implications of them, his hands moved to the keys, programming the gunship to follow the flight vector that Control had transmitted to them. The dull reverberation of the gunship's thrust drives increased, and one G of acceleration gently pulled him further down into his G-seat.

Andrea was attending to her duties too, scanning the exterior of Titan Station for any anomalies as they flew above it, and copying the results of the scans to his display.

Apart from several sections of the station that were either decompressed, locked down or without power, the results looked fairly normal. But there was something that bothered Matthew, even as he reversed the thrust engines and began to decelerate the gunship into position over the Cassini Towers.

Andrea, as usual, named it before he could even consider the question. "We're picking up nothing like the normal distribution of RIG signals from the residential sections," she said, running analysis routines on the scan results. "For one thing, there's not enough of them. I'm only seeing about –" Frowning, she checked her display again. "According to scan, and the station's civic logs, the amount of RIG signals I can see only account for sixteen per cent of normal distributions."

Matthew had no idea how Andrea was hiding her shock, or even if she felt any. _Sixteen__per__cent__of__normal__distributions_. The only time that low a number was ever reached during Titan Station's operational history was during a large-scale maintenance overhaul and retrofit to try and keep up to date with advances in technology from EarthGov's science division, during the era when Hideki Ishimura's shockpoint drive had revolutionized space travel forever. Centuries ago, now. It had taken the engineering teams months to retrofit the Sprawl, even with the financial and material support of every space-based corporation that, to this day, benefited by using the Sprawl as the major way station between Earth and the vast, still largely unexplored depths of the galaxy.

And since that time, not even maintenance breakdowns and Unitologist riots had managed to empty any section of Titan Station by over eighty per cent. "How is that possible?" Matthew asked, turning to stare blankly at Andrea.

She offered him a shrug. "Judging by how fast I seem to be losing RIG signals –" She pointed at the display, and Matthew saw the dots representing residents' RIG signals gradually, yet visibly disappearing from the display.

The realization hit him, and he couldn't suppress the gasp that echoed in the confines of the gunship's cockpit. "You mean they're –" He had trouble forcing the words out, but managed "They're dying?"

"Yes," Andrea said simply, with a look of sadness that completely failed to match the magnitude of the disaster occurring on Titan Station.

"Shit. Fuck." Matthew couldn't think of saying anything else, still reeling from the shock of so much death happening _right __now_, and yet could have been on another world for all of it he was experiencing. He'd known that it had to be bad when General Machette had mentioned a "Class One biological threat", but the implications hadn't reached him then. Now they had.

"The largest concentrations appear to be in positions where security teams have been deployed," Andrea continued, as if she was totally unaffected by what Matthew was feeling. "Those areas also seem to have the fewest casualties. I guess those boys on the ground are good for something," she remarked, with the most out-of-place smile gracing her lips. "But I don't think we'll be getting any support from them if we want to terminate this 'Isaac Clarke'."

The mention of Isaac Clarke, the suspected saboteur and terrorist whose elimination was deemed a "Class One priority" by EarthGov, snapped Matthew back to the situation at hand. By the second, more and more people were dying on Titan Station; and there was nothing he could do about it. But he still had a mission, and he was sworn to do everything in his power to accomplish it.

He glanced at the display, confirming that the gunship was locked into its observational patrol path. Then he sighed. "Andrea, start scanning the Cassini Towers and all areas in the immediate vicinity. We're going to find Isaac Clarke, and take him out."

* * *

><p>AN: Something like six months later, I'm _still_ striving to write more! Sadly for all those who like this story (like, five people? I love you all), the main characters don't return until next chapter. To be honest, I wasn't really sure about pursuing the whole gunship subplot, but I read it again the other day and decided it was good enough. So we'll just see how it goes!


	5. Recovery

**Recovery**

For a while, the only sound to be heard was the metallic echo of his breath panting in his helmet. Just that sound was a relief to him, confirming that whatever those horror freaks he and Tyler had shot down and blown to pieces some minutes ago were, they hadn't managed to end his life yet. For the moment, at least, he was alive.

He thought he could hear Tyler's metallic breathing too; and if he concentrated hard enough, there seemed to be a muted sob of some sorts to be heard, as well.

Scott became aware of someone, or something, tugging on his arm. He jerked abruptly, opening his eyes and making him realize that his right shoulder and hip were aching; he must have been lying on the floor on them. It hurt slightly, but the pain reaffirmed that he was still alive.

He looked to the left, seeing the face of a young girl who still looked frightened, but seemed to have recovered somewhat from it. It took him a second to remember it was Beth; as soon as he did, she let out a smile of joy, and before he could react in any way her arms were wrapped tightly around his neck. "Scott," she mumbled past his shoulder, "I'm so glad you're okay."

Beth's affection – most probably just a nervous reaction, and who could blame her considering what she'd just been through? – made Scott feel a little awkward, but he let himself smile, even though he knew she couldn't see it. "Thank you, Beth," he replied, coughing once to clear his throat. Then, not quite knowing what made him do it, he put an arm around her shoulders. "I'm glad you guys made it out too."

She smiled again, but this time it was tinged with sadness. "I thought I was going to die," she sniffed. "I could feel their blades on my back when we ran, and I could hear the screams of the people around me. Some of them were my friends." She started to cry, letting Scott pull her closer so that he could hold her head. "I thought it was going to be me next. But then we ran around that corner, and we saw you. And you saved us." Tears were streaking down her cheeks now, some of them detaching themselves to fall to the floor. "You saved us, when no one else could."

"It's my duty, Beth," Scott said, "my duty to this station and to its people. I had to save you. I wouldn't be able to live with myself as an officer if I didn't." The words felt hollow to him, like they were taken straight out of the training manual, but they were the truth.

Beth smiled, and let go of him. He sat up, rubbing his shoulder and hip the best he could through his RIG's armour. Looking around the corridor, he saw Tyler, crouching on the wall next to Lauren and Yvonne. When Tyler saw Scott, he gave him a thumbs up.

"Nice to see that you and Beth are awake," Tyler said, his grin hidden behind his faceplate. "I can see where this is going," he added with a chuckle.

"What?" Scott asked, genuinely confused. "The hell are you on about, Tyler?"

"Never mind," Tyler said, sounding serious again. "How are you two holding up?"

Scott shrugged. "I'm fine, I guess. Just a bit shaken up."

"I'm okay too," Beth said, having wiped the tears from her face. "Are you alright, Darrell?"

"Still in fighting condition, that's for sure," he replied, with an uneasy chuckle. From what Scott could tell, Tyler was just a bit uncomfortable being called by his first name. "I'm not really sure about your friends, though. They –"

"Are they alright?" Beth gasped, scuttling closer so that she could see them.

"They're awake, and I can't see any injuries, but they seem a bit…" Tyler hesitated, not wanting to bring any more distress to the poor girl. "Out of it."

"Oh God, I hope they're okay," Beth said as she reached Yvonne, taking hold of her hand. "Yvonne, are you alright? Please be alright!"

"I'm…okay," the slumped over schoolgirl groaned, looking up at Beth. Scott could see that her eyes were red from crying, though the tears had since dried up. "I just keep thinking…about us. About them. About…those _things_." She shook her head in despair. "How can anyone hope to survive that?"

"It'll be okay, Yvonne," Beth said, trying to reassure her friend. "Scott and Darrell are here. They'll protect us. They'll keep us safe. We'll get through this, don't worry."

"…I guess so," Yvonne said reluctantly. She slowly turned her head up to regard the two security officers standing next to them, feeling slightly awkward. "They did save us just then, didn't they?"

"That we did," Tyler said, packing as much boastful pride as possible into the statement.

Yvonne gave out a chuckle. "Men will still be men, eh Beth?" She sighed. "Alright, just give me a minute."

"I knew you could do it," Beth said, giving Yvonne a tight hug. As soon as the two separated, she instantly turned her attention to Lauren. Unlike Yvonne, she was curled up into a ball, clutching her knees as tightly as she could. Scott could hear the occasional whimper or sob, but otherwise she seemed to be silent, and unaware of the world around her. Which could be an extremely dangerous thing to be, given the circumstances.

"Lauren, are you okay?" Beth asked, crouching down next to her curled-up friend.

There was no response for a moment, then Lauren turned to face Beth. Her face, which only half an hour ago had been the source of delightful giggles and smiles, was pale and devoid of emotion; lacking sadness, concern, or fear. Her mouth barely moved as she mumbled something.

"What? What did you say, Lauren?"

"Death is something that affects us all," Lauren intoned emotionlessly, shocking everyone else watching into silence. "Boy or girl, man or woman, miner or engineer, technician or analyst, soldier or doctor. No matter who you are, what you are, everybody dies in the end. Die now, die soon, or die later, you still die. And once you die, you can never come back. Death is the one permanent thing in the universe. Even stars die, and their remains scatter across the void. A void that slowly and surely will claim us all." Then her head slumped back into her ball, refusing to acknowledge anybody.

"Lauren? Lauren!" Beth shook Lauren, trying to get some other kind of response out of her friend. "Lauren, please, you're scaring me!" When she failed to make Lauren respond, Beth turned to Scott and Tyler, who were both looking on in mild horror. "It's trauma, isn't it? Can you do anything to help her?"

Scott shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry Beth, I don't know what to do. I wish I could help, I really do." In truth, while he and Tyler both had some form of medical training, it didn't extend to treating PTSD of this magnitude. And what Lauren was saying was scaring him even more than those monsters had. She sounded like she was already toppling off the deep end, which would be bad for all of them in more ways than one.

Tyler was bent over Lauren, trying to examine her. "Her blood pressure's low," he reported. "I can give her something for it, but I don't think it'll help her overall condition."

"Just do the best you can, try to get her moving," Scott said, his words reminding him of the gravity of their situation. They still had some distance to cover before they could reach the transport hub and link up with Captain Lewis and the rest of their squad, and he was sure that those monsters, whatever they were, weren't going to leave them alone. He and Tyler still had a job to do. "I'm going to recon this area and see if there's anything up ahead. We have to get to the transport hub."

"I'll come with you," Beth said, leaping up from Lauren's side to catch up to him.

Scott balked slightly. He didn't want to place the girl in any more danger than she was already. "Beth, I don't –"

"I don't care," she snapped, cutting him off. "You might have a gun, but you're still only one person." Her expression softened. "I just don't want you to die, Scott."

He sighed, knowing that arguing would just waste even more time. "Okay, Beth, follow me and stay close."

"I will, I promise."

"Let's go, then," he said, and started to walk down the corridor, sweeping his flashlight around to cover areas where the overhead lighting was dim or dark. Apart from the security officers and schoolgirls, the corridor seemed to be empty of any other life. Colourful yet dull posters adorned the walls, advertising everything from newly-opened outlets in commercial megacomplexes to careers in EarthGov. The latter earned an ironic laugh from Scott; he might not be the smartest researcher in the galaxy, but he was pretty sure that "good things" weren't happening at the moment.

It wasn't long before he and Beth reached a corner in the corridor; before she could walk further, Scott grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

"What –" she grunted in protest.

"We don't know what's around that corner," Scott explained. "And…I don't want you to die either, Beth."

She nodded. "Right. Sorry, Scott."

"It's okay, you don't have to apologize." Before Beth could say anything to further the conversation, Scott moved forward to brace himself against the wall. He listened, trying to make out anything that might give one of those monsters away. Apart from the constant humming of air conditioning vents and the occasional sounds of machinery, there was nothing.

Scott took a deep breath, and slowly inched his head to look around the corner. The hallway he could see was in near-darkness, with only a few flickering light globes allowing him to see anything. He activated his pulse rifle's flashlight, checked his ammo, and aimed it around the corner. The beam swept over the hallway, revealing it to be empty – except for a dead body near the door at the far end, lying in a puddle of blood.

He gulped at the sight, but his training had taught him to suppress his natural revulsion to blood and gore. Reluctantly, he reported "Clear," and stepped out into the hallway, Beth following behind him. He stepped closer to the dead body, making sure there was nothing else in the hallway to threaten them. When he was close, he could see that it was a man, who appeared to be dressed in a mechanic's uniform. The uniform was stained with blood, from what looked like some very deep and nasty cuts on the torso. To his horror, Scott could see that the man's left arm had been burned as well; most likely from one of those acidic creatures. It was clear that the man must have been wounded escaping from those creatures, and then bled out afterwards.

"Oh my God," Beth gasped, clutching her hands over her mouth. She sounded as horrified as he was at the sight. "What a horrible way to die."

Scott nodded; there was nothing to be said. Then he noticed something in the man's hands, and bent forward to pick it up. The man's death grip was tight, but Scott managed to pry the object loose. Looking at it, he saw that it was an audio recorder.

Curious, he found and hit the button to replay the device's last recording.

What must have been the voice of the dead man crackled and wheezed out of the device. "If you can hear this," the voice said, interrupted by fits of coughing, "then I'm definitely dead. I lost a lot of blood when that…that _freak_ sliced me open. It can't be too long for me now."

There was a gallows laugh, followed by more coughing. Then the man spoke again. "Listen…whatever these things are…you can kill them. You can kill them! But only if you cut off their limbs. Legs, arms, whatever. The most important thing…is that you cut them apart." More coughing, longer and deeper this time. "But guns won't do it. You need mining gear. I found a plasma cutter near my workbench, and I used it on them. If you find this…" The man coughed again, evidently struggling to continue speaking. "…then you can have it. I won't need it anymore." There was a final laugh; then it turned to coughing, and slowly stopped. Then there was nothing to be heard, except for background static as the device continued to record its surroundings before it recognized that nothing was being said, and automatically switched off.

"God," Beth repeated. "That poor man."

"Yes," Scott answered simply, but since the start of the emergency he found he'd been growing less affected by death. He didn't know what those freak-creatures were, but he was certain they had spread all over the Sprawl by now. The dead man lying in his own blood in front of them would be just another casualty amongst…he shuddered, as he realized the death count must surely run into the thousands.

He was more intrigued by the man's log mentioning using a plasma cutter against the creatures. While Beth continued to stand there in mild shock, Scott knelt down and placed his pulse rifle on the floor, then began to search the man's body for anything he might be able to use. There was nothing in his pockets, save for a credit chit containing six hundred credits which Scott pocketed, the dead man having no use for money anymore. He found the man's ID tag clipped to his belt, identifying him as Mark Blunter, Titan Station Systems Technician, and pocketed that as well. Then he turned Blunter onto his back, and he found what he was looking for.

Scott unstrapped the plasma cutter from Blunter's back, and turned it over in his hands, inspecting it. It seemed to be a standard Schofield Tools 211-V model, with no extra frills or conveniences added. He checked the status gauge, and saw that the energy pack was full. A further search of Blunter's body revealed no spares, though.

He stood up, about to put the plasma cutter away, when he remembered that Beth was still standing beside him, completely unarmed and defenceless without him. He knew that despite all the safety features installed by their manufacturers, mining tools could still be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands. Or, as Blunter claimed, extremely useful in the right hands. So instead he turned to the schoolgirl, and held the cutter out to her. "Here, this is for you. Take it."

She looked surprised. "What? I don't know how to use a –"

"I can't protect you all the time, Beth," Scott told her, keeping his voice level, but with an instructional force behind it so that she would follow his orders. "You need a weapon, and this man had the right idea when it came to mining gear."

Making sure she was watching him, Scott continued as if he was helping instructors to train cadets in the Academy, "This is a 211-V plasma cutter. Pull the trigger to discharge it. Each discharge will use ten percent of the energy pack." He turned the cutter to show her the switches on the side near the trigger. "This switch toggles the cutter between horizontal and vertical discharge modes, this switch toggles the aim assist, and this switch toggles the safety. Make sure you keep the safety on when you're not using it, and never point it at something you don't intend to use it on." Scott paused for a second to make sure it sank in. "Sound clear?"

Beth looked reluctant, but she nodded and said "Okay." Without another word, Scott handed the plasma cutter over. She took it and held it in her hands, testing its weight, and tried aiming it at the wall with and without the aim assist laser. Eventually she turned back to him and nodded again. "I think we should get back to the others," she said, "I don't want to stay here any longer."

"I can agree with that," Scott said, and the two of them began walking back around the corridor.

* * *

><p>Tyler was still tending to Lauren's slumped form when the two of them got back, breaking into a brisk walk partly out of relief, but also out of urgency. Yvonne had gotten to her feet, and with nothing else to do had begun pacing the corridor. When she caught sight of Scott and Beth, she stopped pacing and started towards them.<p>

"You guys sure took your time," she remarked, in the same sarcastic tone of voice that Scott had heard when he'd first met her. "What ever were you doing together?"

Scott answered first. "We searched this corridor and the next. No contacts."

Beth, on the other hand, found Yvonne's rhetorical question somewhat amusing, worthy of breaking into a giggle. "I don't know what you're trying to imply there, Yvonne," she answered. Then, before Yvonne could respond to that, she lifted her newly-acquired plasma cutter so it was clearly visible. "Look what I found."

Yvonne's mouth dropped. "You lucky bitch," she replied, not taking her eyes off the tool's shiny metal. "I didn't even get to use one in engineering class. Now you've got one. What the hell did you do to get it?" she demanded, her voice thick with jealousy.

"Nothing. Scott found it and gave it to me." She turned to him. "Isn't that right, Scott?"

Scott wasn't sure of how best to respond to that, so he simply shrugged and said "Sure."

"Lucky bitch," Yvonne repeated, though without much meaning.

"Don't worry, Yvonne," Tyler interrupted, looking up from Lauren, "First mining tool I find, you can have it."

Yvonne laughed. "Thanks a lot, Darrell," she replied, and gave him a slap on the back.

His expression was hidden, but Scott could tell that Tyler was shifting uncomfortably. "How's she doing?" he asked, before Yvonne could pick up on Tyler's discomfort.

Tyler gave a helpless shrug. "I stabilized her, and I think she can walk on her own, but the rest…I don't know. I'm sorry, everyone," he murmured, just loudly enough to hear.

"You did your best, Tyler, don't worry about it," Scott assured his partner, which he accepted with a nod. Scott walked over to Lauren, who at least was now slumped on the floor instead of curled up in a ball, and knelt down beside her, offering his hand out to her.

"Lauren?" he entreated, hoping she wouldn't lapse into another monotone speech.

The girl looked up at him, her face still blank, blinking slowly and regularly. Scott stared into that face, not daring to say anything else. Slowly, she reached out her hand to Scott, letting him take it and pull her up. He put a hand on her shoulders to steady her, then he let go. Without him holding her, Lauren stood still in the centre of the corridor, staring straight ahead. She didn't move, not even when Yvonne tentatively laid a hand on her shoulder, and just kept staring.

"Man," Tyler said, feeling a little uncomfortable breaking the silence, "this is really messed up."

"Yeah," Scott said, allowing the silence to last a few seconds longer, but they had already spent too long here, and every passing moment reminded him that they were still in danger from those things. "Alright, we have to get moving. Tyler, how's your ammo?"

Tyler straightened up, remembering his responsibilities as a security officer. "I'm not sure," he replied, looking down and checking the magazines still attached to his RIG. "I've only got four mags left. You?"

"Two and a half," Scott answered, depressingly aware that the two quasi-grenades he'd used on the horde earlier had used up a whole magazine by themselves. He brought up his schematic of the nearby area, checking for the nearest assembler-requisition store. According to the schematic, it was just over a kilometre away, on the way to Transport Hub B-4.

He groaned, knowing that he would have to be much more careful with his ammunition from now on. "Nearest store is about a K away. Let's hustle over there, and maybe we can load up on more weapons and ammo. We're gonna need them." He waited a second, seeing the nervous grins from Beth and Yvonne – and Tyler, too – before he gave them instructions. "Tyler and Yvonne, you cover the rear, and help Lauren along if she needs it. Beth and I will take the lead." He might have been reluctant about asking her to expose herself to the risk of being at the front, but after she had willingly accompanied him to scout the corridor he knew he could trust her to not object. He still would have preferred Tyler to be by his side, but with only the two of them he needed Tyler to watch his back.

What concerned him more was the fact that he had no idea what was waiting for him in all those corridors and rooms between him, the store, and Captain Lewis at Transport Hub B-4. Just two hours ago, walking a kilometre in the hallways of the Sprawl would have been trivial, something to complain and joke about with Tyler. Now, every corner could potentially be hiding one of those bladed slashers; or even worse, one of those pukers, just waiting to spill acid on him and melt through his RIG. It was all he could do to clamp down on that sudden spike of fear, trying not to let any of it show to the others.

But he was still a security officer. Even if his training had never prepared him for a threat of this magnitude, he was still sworn to carry out his duty of protecting Titan Station's residents where he could. And right now, the lives of Tyler, Beth, Lauren and Yvonne were in his hands. He could not fail them.

So he raised his pulse rifle into a ready stance, and commanded "Let's move out."

* * *

><p>AN: Longest chapter so far (3722 words), and it has no action at all? What was I thinking? Well, not that kind of action, wink wink, nudge nudge. I was sort of going to go further into the group's corridor journey, but there was already so much character development that I decided to call it a day. There's always the next chapter, after all.

And a huge thank you to my two latest reviewers, Jan Lee and guccileopard! You have no idea how elated I was when I idly checked the Dead Space section for new chapters and I saw that my own little story had reviews on it. Just the hope of receiving acknowledgement and praise from others is enough to keep me going, and you two have made me feel so happy.

Until next chapter!


	6. Apprehension

**Apprehension**

Even in the relative safety and isolation of Transport Hub B-4's central control room, Captain Willard Lewis didn't feel any less caught up in the general chaos that seemed to have overtaken the rest of the station. The security officers in the room with him, under his command, served as constant reminder of how the world that he'd thought he'd known had turned upside down without the slightest warning, or reason.

He still found it hard to believe what was happening, that these monsters, or aliens, or whatever the hell they were, were running loose throughout the station, killing people without any regard for morals or sanity. Nobody knew anything about them or what they were doing here on the Sprawl, and no answers were forthcoming from General Machette, who had said little else in his transmission other than ordering him to rally the men under his command and secure Transport Hub B-4, so that everyone on board the station could be evacuated.

A simple enough order; and the right one to issue in these circumstances. But the way in which the General had failed to provide any other information than "Class One biological threat" and "Reports indicate that the creatures are vulnerable to limb dismemberment", especially after he'd requested it, was giving rise to a growing suspicion in Lewis's mind. Not enough to make him falter in the line of duty, but enough to sow the seeds of doubt and uncertainty.

While Machette hadn't given him anything like a full briefing on the situation, Lewis knew his own way around Titan Station's security logs and their access procedures to fill in some of the gaps that, he was now almost certain, had been deliberately left by Machette. It hadn't taken him long to find out that, just this morning, a disturbance had been logged in the mines underneath Government Sector. While "disturbances" weren't unusual in themselves, the fact that multiple groups of mining and engineering personnel had gone offline, for no discernable reason, warranted a security team to investigate it. The team had even been ferried to the mines using gunships, courtesy of the Class Three priority attached to the mission.

However, when Lewis actually attempted to access the mission's log file, he'd found himself blocked by a Class Two firewall, which he'd immediately found suspicious. Class Two meant that only Titan Station's administrative staff could access the file, and anybody who wanted to copy it would require the authorization of a senior security officer. Naturally, that didn't include him; and at a time like this, contacting one of his acquaintances in the administrative control room to get them to authorize his access was virtually impossible. But even with that line of investigation blocked, he had enough dots to make his own connections.

For months now, rumours had been circulating amongst the Sprawl's security and administration personnel about EarthGov's involvement in some sort of top-secret research project. The rumours pointed to a classified research centre, deep in the heart of Government Sector, where not even the security officers who stood guard twenty-four/seven outside the doors knew what was going on inside. Casual observers who loitered in the corridor outside after their shifts were over to keep an eye on the door had spotted many scientists and technicians entering and exiting, all of whom wore variants of the same expression on their faces: an optimistic bravado that slowly wore down over time to give way to anxiety and fear, their eyes flinching between the walls to avoid making eye contact, especially with each other. They never said anything except to recite their credentials to the guards, and even then those words were stilted, uncertain; and they always scurried inside as soon as their identity and authorization were verified, as if the research centre was some sort of refuge from the rest of the station.

With such a secret in their midst, almost all of the security officers stationed on the Sprawl had begun investigations of their own, trying to pry out even just a kilobyte more of information about what was happening behind their backs on their own station. Lewis had known about it, but he hadn't cared much for it, preferring to busy himself with the daily minutiae and stresses of command. Until today.

He had a suspicion that the secret research project taking place in Government Sector, and the almost-equally mysterious alien monsters running loose on the Sprawl, were closely connected in some way. Confirming his theory was the fact that the approximate location of the "disturbance" this morning had been very deep in the mines, close to the centre of Government Sector. And when he'd checked on a schematic of Titan Station, the disturbance had taken place almost right underneath the area where everybody estimated the secret project was located.

He still couldn't believe that such a thing could possibly be true. Serving EarthGov, and Titan Station, was what he'd committed his life to. If EarthGov really was involved in creating the kind of alien monsters that were besieging them right now, then his life would unravel in more ways than one.

And that couldn't happen. He still had a duty to ensure the safety of the residents of Titan Station, and he was sworn to carry it out. So all thoughts of doubt and conspiracy were pushed to the back of his mind, at least for the time being.

He looked at the tactical display in front of him, which was currently showing a schematic of Transport Hub B-4 to him and the other officers in the room. There were far too many people, both civilians and security, in the hub to display them all individually, so the computer had provided a simplified interpretation for them. Blue chevrons denoted the active security teams who had set about blockading and fortifying all the entrances to the hub that they could, although there weren't enough of them to cover all the entrances; so Lewis had assigned them along the most likely routes of approach, for both any surviving residents and incoming hostiles, which the computer indicated with red arrows on the display. Groups of civilians inside the hub were represented by green diamonds, the majority of them clustered around the individual tram line stations, with a few security teams to maintain order and make sure they didn't panic or interfere with the hub's defense. Gold figures glowed in the corner of the display, showing how long Lewis and the officers under his command would have to protect the transport hub until the residents had all been evacuated on the trams. The first few trams had already arrived and departed the transport hub, managing to evacuate nearly half of the gathered civilians, but there was still an appreciable number that had to be protected before Lewis and his officers could get out of here too.

"Karder," he called, snapping his fingers. "Give me a status report." Having the tactical display was all well and good, but he needed to hear the details for himself from his officers. It was the only way he could be certain that their position hadn't been compromised.

Lieutenant Rina Karder turned to face him: a slim woman in her thirties, who'd been his assistant and co-ordination officer for over two years now. Like everyone else in the room, she'd removed her helmet so as to work in more comfort, allowing her shiny dark hair to frame her darkened cheeks. On more idle days, Lewis had often thought about her, and how beautiful she could be if she didn't choose to burden herself with the responsibilities of command and security. But equally he respected her competence, and always appreciated having her to assist him in his own duties.

"All blockades are reporting secure," Karder replied, tapping keys on the display in front of her to confirm it. "No breaches detected or reported in the unsecured areas. The residents are still pretty agitated out there, but they seem to be under control now that we're actually getting them out of here. We should have the last of them loaded and away in another thirty minutes."

"Good work, Karder," Lewis said. "Any update on our stragglers?" As much as he didn't want to leave any of the officers under his command behind, every minute they remained behind would put them in greater danger. As much as he hated being so clinical about it, he had to consider the majority.

"Patrol Teams Six and Seventeen are still en route," she answered, checking her display again. "They should be reaching us within fifteen to twenty minutes, if their luck holds out. We don't have any intel on the opposition they might face on their way here, so we still can't give them any support."

"Have they reported encountering any further hostiles?" Lewis questioned.

"No, sir. But we're still getting their RIG signals, and they seem fine."

"Alright, carry on. Keep me updated."

"Yes, sir," she nodded, and turned back to her duties.

Lewis spent a brief second continuing to stare at her, then he returned to examining the tactical display. According to the numbers in the lower right, another tram was arriving in the transport hub.

* * *

><p>"Everyone stop."<p>

The four people who had come to depend on him the most obeyed instantly, halting in the corridor just behind him. Even Lauren stopped straight away, without Yvonne having to increase her grip on the stricken girl's shoulder. They all instinctively looked around them, trying to see what had concerned Scott.

"What is it, Scott?" Beth asked, her voice betraying a tiny quaver of fear. She gripped the plasma cutter tighter in her hands, knowing it and Scott were her only protection from the unknown.

"I thought I heard something," he answered, trying to concentrate on his surroundings. The sound had been barely audible, registering as a nearly imperceptible spike against the background. But Scott had lived on the Sprawl his whole life, and after nearly twenty-eight years the dull humming of a station's life support systems and the muffled clanking of industrial machinery working in the background had been ingrained into his senses. Environmental awareness courses during his training in the Academy had only enhanced this ability, and he knew most of the sounds that Titan Station would make in various states of operation.

This tiny thudding he'd heard was not one of them.

He scanned around the corridor with his pulse rifle's flashlight, seeing nothing different to any of the other rooms and hallways the five of them had walked through in the past ten minutes. They had all had one aspect in common with each other, and that was the complete and utter lack of any other living people. Several times they'd come across signs of struggle and those monsters passing through, usually in the form of blood and overturned objects, but they'd found quite a few dead bodies too. He'd reluctantly searched most of them, and by now had accrued over two and a half thousand credits in his pocket (he'd given another twelve hundred to Tyler, after he'd made a half-hearted quip about disproportionate distribution of income), but none of them had been carrying any weaponry he could possibly use. Most probably they had been residents trying to flee, only to be cut down by those monsters as they ran. The thought made him shudder, briefly.

Then he heard that thudding noise again, much louder and clearer this time. Tyler jerked up behind him, sweeping his flashlight across the walls as he muttered "Shit, what was that?" With all of them thoroughly unnerved now, Scott listened closely to the sound. It sounded a lot like something was moving around close to them – and much too quickly to be an ordinary human. It had to be one of those things, about to get the drop on them.

Scott tensed up, holding his pulse rifle ready as he tried to locate the source of the noise. He knew on a tactical level that the best outcome for them would be to avoid engagement by hostiles if possible; but a more base, impulsive part of him was just itching for a fight.

There was another sound, this one of metal tearing, and Scott frowned. If the sound was that close to them, then the creature responsible for making them had to be –

His head snapped upwards. "They're using the vents –!" Scott shouted, at the exact same instant that the air conditioning vent above him broke open, and from it emerged one of those slashers, dropping onto the floor almost directly in front of him.

He stumbled back, trying desperately to line up the pulse rifle on his target. The creature flailed its sharp blade arms in front of it as it recovered from the force of hitting the floor, slicing through the air mere centimetres in front of Scott. Scott knew that he didn't have time to get a more precise shot, and his life depended on neutralizing the threat _now_.

He fired. The pulse rounds travelled up the slasher's knee and thigh, severing the creature's left leg just as it was about to close the distance between them. It fell to the ground in front of him, letting out a roar of pain and anger. But like the others he'd encountered, a single dismembered leg wasn't enough to stop the creature. It started to prop itself up on its blade arms, preparing itself to attack again.

More out of instinct than any tactical decision-making, Scott planted his left foot on the ground, and lifted his right as the creature faced him again. With a yell that carried all of his terror and natural human aggressiveness with it, he brought his right foot down in a G-stomp on the creature's left arm. The localized gravity forces in his right G-boot gave him far greater strength than normal, causing the slasher's arm to break off as the boot drove through the shoulder joint to touch the floor again.

It roared again, the damage to its body momentarily stunning it. But it still wouldn't give up, trying to claw at the floor with its intact right arm and leg in order to face what had been supposed to be its victim. Scott stepped backwards, away from it, aimed the pulse rifle downwards, and fired another burst, ending the slasher's torment.

"Shit. Fuck," he muttered, unable to say anything else as the shock of how close to death he had come chose that moment to hammer into him. He staggered back to lean against a wall, letting the pulse rifle hang from his wrist as he took deep breaths to try and calm himself.

Tentatively, Beth approached the shocked security officer, giving the dead monster on the floor a wide berth as she did so. She slid next to him on the wall, and gently put a hand on his shoulder. He flinched minutely at the touch, but relaxed when he looked up and saw it was her.

"Are you okay, Scott?" Beth asked, her voice filled with genuine concern for him.

"I –" Scott began, then he sighed heavily. "I nearly died back there, Beth. If I'd just been that little bit slower, or my gun misfired, or if I hadn't seen it coming –" He realized that he was starting to edge into hysteria, and forced himself to stop, focusing on regaining control of himself.

"But you didn't, Scott," Beth said, holding on to him tighter. "You protected us. You kept us all safe. That's all that matters." In truth, she had been even more frightened than he had, the sight of the bloodthirsty monster freezing her to the ground in terror. She'd clutched her plasma cutter with white knuckles, unable to move her arms or legs as the monster roared its desire to kill. For the second time in her whole life, she had been convinced she was about to die.

But then Scott had faced the creature, and fought it, and won. Whether he'd meant to or not, he'd kept his promise to her and the others, and kept them safe from harm. Scott deserved nothing less than her total gratitude, and if that included having to bring him back from the brink of shock, then she would do it without question.

Scott sighed again, more resigned this time. "Yeah. You're right. I did." He turned to gaze at Beth, the schoolgirl he'd met only an hour ago who had gone through even more than he had, having to run for her life as the people she'd loved and cherished had died around her. And yet, despite the emotional burden she carried, she was there to reassure him that he was doing what he had to do. "Thank you, Beth," he murmured.

"I –" Beth stuttered, her face reddening slightly at Scott's gratitude. The sight managed to make the corner of his lip twitch into a smile, and he let out a short chuckle. "It's the least I can do," she managed to recover, her face still red with embarrassment.

"I really hate to interrupt the moment," Tyler interjected, "but we've gotta keep moving, before more of those things–"

He didn't finish, as a crash and roar from behind them made everybody spin around, Scott moving off the wall in a heartbeat to back up his partner. He was just in time to see a puker stumbling out from behind a corner, drooling acid from its hanging jaw. It halted as it caught sight of the group, and started to rear its head back.

Tyler lined his sights up on the creature's head, and opened fire. The head blew off in a spray of acid and fleshy chunks, and the puker reeled back, stunned by the damage done to it. Before it could recover, Scott added his own fire to the attack, aiming for the arms. Pulse rounds ripped holes out of the creature's arms, but unlike the spindly skewer arms that the slashers had, the puker's arms were much thicker and more resilient. It jerked slightly from the pulse rounds hitting it, but it kept on coming towards them.

"Shit!" Scott cursed as he fought the impulse to step backwards, remaining firm in the face of the incoming danger. He briefly considered using another quasi-grenade to dispose of the puker, but that would be a bad idea; not only would it put even more strain on their ammunition reserves, at that range there wasn't any guarantee that the explosion wouldn't injure them too. Then he remembered there was another weapon accessible to them, which had apparently enjoyed success against the creatures they were facing.

"Beth, your plasma cutter!" he yelled, firing another burst to hold the puker back as it recovered from the damage wrought upon it.

"What?" Beth cried, her hands visibly shaking, and the fear on her face plain for all to see.

"Use it on the creature!" Scott shouted at her. "Shoot its legs off! _Now!_"

"O-okay!" she stammered, the force in Scott's voice compelling her into action. Without quite understanding or focusing on what she was doing, she flipped off the plasma cutter's safety and turned on the aim assist, sending a bright blue trio of collinear laser beams out to search for a target. As she saw Darrell firing another burst of his own, she raised the mining and engineering tool to the creature, positioning the laser beams over its leg. She took a deep breath, trying to steady her nerves, and pulled the trigger.

A bright lance of burning plasma surged forth, too fast for the eye to follow: she only saw it because she happened to be looking at where it was going. The plasma connected with the puker's leg, and sliced clean through it, acid spilling out from the rupture. Suddenly with only one leg to support it, the puker was knocked back by Scott and Tyler's shots, causing it to fall. Its left arm, which was already weakened from multiple pulse rounds striking it, broke off upon impact with the floor, causing even more acid to add to the pool on the floor. The creature tried to move, but the acid was already eating away at it, burning through its flesh like industrial solvent spray. One final burst from Tyler's pulse rifle, and the thing was still.

Beth lowered the plasma cutter, and stared at it, then at the dead monster in front of her, and back again. She was amazed by the results of her single shot; her hands were no longer shaking, she noticed.

Around her, Scott and Darrell finished reloading their pulse rifles, and turned their attention to making sure the whole group was okay. She felt Scott putting a hand on her shoulder, and turned to face him.

"Good shot, Beth," Scott told her, hoping she heard the smile in his voice that she couldn't see on his face.

"Thanks," Beth said, her face no longer flushing at his praise. She found herself smiling back at him.

Tyler, meanwhile, had gone over to Yvonne, who was busy trying to calm a pale and shaking Lauren. He couldn't help but be concerned for the stricken girl's condition: it was fairly passive now, but it could easily change into something more dangerous over time. At least they were getting closer to the transport hub, where he hoped they could pass off the problem when they were evacuated. "How are you guys holding up?" he asked, realizing that Yvonne had been staring at him for a few seconds.

She gave a brittle laugh. "Still in one piece, as you can see. Not too sure about Lauren, though." Yvonne was about to turn back to helping Lauren, but then a sarcastic thought flashed through her mind. "You should have given that plasma cutter to me, instead of Beth. She's too nice. I would have chopped that thing up in a heartbeat."

That made Tyler laugh out loud. "Yeah, I can imagine that," he answered, in the snarkiest voice he could manage. "But he's the boss, I can't do anything about it," jerking a thumb in Scott's direction. "Sorry, Yvonne."

"Hah, sure," she replied, waving a hand dismissively; but he managed to catch the slightest hint of a grin on her face.

Before Tyler could attempt a reply to that, Scott interrupted by saying "Alright, we've got to keep moving. It's only a hundred metres to the store, and once we've loaded up we can continue to the transport hub and link up with our squad. Let's get moving." With that, Scott raised his pulse rifle, ever mindful of the dwindling amount of ammunition he had for it, and led the way forward again.

Tyler was about to follow, when an impulse of curiosity made him turn back to the dead puker that had attacked them just moments earlier. There wasn't much to look at anymore, as the bloated corpse had been slowly and quietly dissolving into a pool of acid while he and Scott had been checking on the schoolgirls. While most of the creature's body had broken down, there was something he could see in the gradually spreading pool that refused to be corroded, a miniscule island in an equally small lake.

Wanting to see what it was, Tyler engaged his RIG's built-in kinesis module – something he almost never found himself using, but there was no way in hell he was getting near that stuff – and probed the surface of the acid with the localized gravity field. After a second or two, the discrimination software determined what he wanted to pick up, and focused the kinesis beam on it, dragging the object out of the acid. As it came closer to him, he noticed that the acid wasn't sticking to it, and had more or less dripped every drop onto the floor before reaching him.

Yvonne, who had taken Lauren's hand and started to lead the stricken girl in the direction that Scott was taking them, stopped briefly to stare at Tyler as he disengaged the kinesis field and let the object drop into his hand. When he noticed her, he saw that she had a look on her face which could only be described as jealously.

"What?" he asked casually, striding to catch up with her and Scott.

"You've got a kinesis module?" she returned, incredulously. "I'm fucking jealous. I never got to touch any of the good stuff in engineering class."

"Heh," Tyler chuckled, "I wonder why that was?"

Yvonne glared at him. "Shut the hell up. It's only because we had to learn about basic circuitry and all that stuff. We only started doing practical experience this term."

"Oh, really?" Tyler had gone through an engineering course in the Academy, but it had been somewhat basic and compressed. After all, they were supposed to be police and security, not technicians. The only reason that they'd had to go through it was because they were on a space station, and relied on technology and an artificial environment for their survival. Officers had to be able to respond to emergencies of that nature, at least until the proper qualified engineers could take over. "Then if you're so good at it, why don't you tell me what this is?" He held out the metallic object to her, allowing her to see it.

She looked at it for about a second, and scoffed. "Easy. That's a semiconductor. Those things are everywhere, literally. It's just that you never see one that's not inside a computer, so no-one knows what it is." She paused to take another look at it, and then added, "Oh wow, I think that's actually a bronze one."

"So what's that mean?" Tyler asked, interested in what she had to say on the subject.

"It means it's a piece of shit, that's what," Yvonne said, and then suddenly burst into a brief laughter, despite the horrifying circumstances all around them. "They stopped using those years ago because they broke too easily. Couldn't handle the power load. The only reason they still have some around is because there's some older machines that still use them. And it's easier to get new bronze than replace the machines."

"So this is basically worthless, then?" Tyler said, putting the semiconductor away in one of his RIG's empty pouches as he slowed to stop. The group was about pass through another door, and Scott was already preparing to enter and clear the room beyond, with Beth's help. Tyler stayed where he was, knowing that his job was to keep them all safe from behind.

"Pretty much. You might find a collector who wants it, I guess, but I wouldn't bank on it. Where'd you get it, anyway?"

"That dead pukey-thing we shot up back there," Tyler answered, jerking his thumb behind them.

"Say what? Why'd one of those things have a bronze semiconductor on them?"

"Don't know, don't care. But I just _know_ I can get ahead of Fairbanks in the financial game with this."

The quip made Yvonne laugh, and soon Tyler was laughing as well.

Scott, who had his pulse rifle cradled in his arms ready to enter the next room, couldn't help but overhear parts of the conversation that Tyler and Yvonne were having. "Sounds like they're having a good time," he remarked, as if everything was normal.

Beth looked back, and giggled a little at the sight. "Yeah, she's always like that. I guess she can't help it." She turned back to the door in front of them, and sighed. "Alright, let's do this."

Scott aimed his pulse rifle at the door, and ordered, "Go."

By now, Beth knew what to do. In the way that Scott had directed her, she used her left hand to interact with the hologram reading **Open?**, and then withdrew it to join her right in holding her plasma cutter as the door's servos cycled to build up enough pressure to open it. Both of them tensed, in position on either side of the door and ready to face whatever might lie beyond it.

The door retracted upwards, and Scott stepped into the doorway, shining his flashlight into the room to make up for the pronounced lack of overhead lighting. Now that he knew those creatures were able to use the air vents, this time he made sure to scan the walls and ceiling as soon as he deemed that there was nothing dangerous on the floor. There was a single vent on the ceiling, as well as one set into the wall nearby, but neither of them were close to the store that he could see at the far end. The glow of its holographic interface dispelled the darkness out to the radius of a metre, looking totally out of place in its normality.

Before Scott could declare the room clear, a movement caught his eye. He shifted his aim downwards, just in time to see something no larger than a suitcase scuttling behind a green supply crate.

"Hold on, I think I've got something," he announced, aiming at the supply crate. He knew he hadn't imagined it, there had been _something_ there. It had to be a new type of monster. A new aspect to the deadly threat the Sprawl was facing. He steadied his aim, and fired a three-round burst at the creature behind the crate.

The crate broke apart, and there was a loud screech from whatever had been behind it. Scott trained his flashlight on it, revealing a small round creature that didn't seem to have any appendages other than the legs it was using to scuttle across the floor, heading for the nearest composite wall.

Scott didn't hesitate, and fired another burst at it as he shouted "Contact!" It flinched from the impact of the pulse rounds, and stopped moving. But it wasn't dead, and it turned to face Scott, showing eyes that glowed yellow, and a line of fangs jutting out of its mouth.

Then without warning, three tentacles sprung up from the small creature's back, each one tipped with a set of barbs that glinted in Scott's flashlight. Before he was able to register the threat, it flicked its tentacles, and flung a trio of barbs straight at him.

"Shit!" he yelled, and flung himself to one side as the barbs flew towards him. He wasn't quite fast enough, and one of the barbs struck him as he fell, burying itself in his RIG's chestplate. It failed to penetrate entirely through the moulded composite armour, but the momentum it carried was enough to cause him harm. He cried out from the pain as he landed on the floor, the impact not helping his injury at all.

Beside him, Beth fired her plasma cutter at the creature. The plasma discharge hit the base of one of the tentacles and severed it, letting it flop onto the ground. The creature squealed in pain, but it was still able to turn towards her. She realized what it was going to do, and fired another shot before ducking back behind the doorway. Her shot missed, scoring a black line in the wall behind the creature, and then barbs sliced through the air where she had been just half a second ago. Regardless of the fact that it had missed, Beth still screamed, suddenly afraid for her own perilously fragile life.

Then Tyler strode up to the doorway, sighting the small creature as its tentacles retracted into its body and it started to scurry away again. For a moment he watched in disbelief as the thing did a little leap and, suddenly, it was crawling _on the wall_, anchored at ninety degrees to the horizontal. But then it stopped moving, and started to raise its two remaining tentacles.

"You aren't getting away, you little fuck!" Tyler yelled at it, and fired fifteen rounds into the base of the tentacles. The pulse rounds hammered into the tentacles, causing the creature to jerk about, and then the final two tentacles were severed. With a cry, the creature fell from the wall, landing on the floor with a thump.

Scott, who had been trying to lever himself off the floor, had just rolled onto his back when he heard the air vent above them break open. He looked up to confirm it, seeing another one of those lurkers crawling out of the vent, somehow managing to cling to the ceiling. But that anomaly was quickly forgotten when he realized that its tentacles were extended, ready to fire; and that Tyler, in the midst of killing the first lurker, hadn't noticed the new threat above him.

"Above you!" Scott shouted, but he knew that there was no time for Tyler to react. In less than a second, he made his decision. He brought his pulse rifle to bear, using the wall at his back to steady him, and switched the quasi-grenade function to impact detonation mode. He aimed, and fired.

The quasi-grenade struck the lurker in the centre of its mass, and detonated, sending the creature spinning to hit the floor.

After the rush and adrenaline of action, the sudden silence that followed the lurkers' deaths took a few seconds for them to register. It was Tyler who broke it first, walking forward and checking for any more hostiles with his flashlight. When he was satisfied, he turned his attention to Scott, who was still on the ground with his back to the wall.

"You alright, Fairbanks?" Tyler asked, kneeling down on the ground next to his partner.

Scott realized that he was still holding up his pulse rifle, and lowered it. "I'm fine," he replied, checking his RIG's physiological monitor to make sure. Apart from some bruising where the barb had struck him, he was uninjured. "I'll just be a bit sore in the morning."

"Must be a regular thing for you," Tyler remarked, making them both chuckle. "Come on, get up. We've got some shopping to do."

"Thanks," Scott said, accepting Tyler's hand and hauling himself to his feet. As soon as he was up, he checked his pulse rifle's ammo readout to discover that he was just about out of ammo. Luckily for him, the assembly-requisition store that they'd spent the last fifteen minutes trekking towards was just a few strides away. "Beth?" he called. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm here, Scott," Beth replied, coming into the room with her plasma cutter in both hands, but lowered. "Nothing hit me, but…God, that was close." Behind her, Yvonne lightly but firmly pushed Lauren into the room, and let the door close as soon as they were clear of it.

"Don't sweat it, that's what we're here for," Tyler remarked, briefly checking his pulse rifle.

"We're almost there, people," Scott reassured them. "Just a few hundred metres to the transport hub, and we can get out of here." He glanced around the room again, trying to discern any other threats or tactical advantages. "Beth, Yvonne, I'd like you to inventory whatever's on the floor," he ordered, indicating the small mounds of junk that were scattered across the room. "If you find weapons or mining tools, that's great. Just bring everything else to the store when you're done. Tyler, since you've got ammo, you're on guard duty. Secure the room, and make sure nothing interrupts us until we're done."

"Wow, thanks a lot, Fairbanks," Tyler groused, only half-jokingly. "If I'd known I would have wasted all my bullets back there." He started to walk towards the door at the other end of the room, scanning every surface he came across with his flashlight. He didn't want to get surprised by any more lurkers popping out of vents or alcoves, or any other forms those monsters might have taken.

Something bumped against his foot, making a sound of metal clattering on the ground. He stopped, and looked down to see what it was, then knelt down to pick it up and examine it. It was a GRS shotgun, a weapon designed for engaging hostiles in the close-quarters confines of spacecraft or installations. Originally meant to be used by Earth Defense Force Marines in anti-piracy and -terrorist interdictions, it had been widely adapted by EarthGov security forces as a riot-control measure, used with less-lethal ammunition in conjunction with other stun weaponry against the more dangerous rioters. It was fully capable of automatic fire, with magazines holding twenty-four shells at a time. While this particular iteration wasn't designed for military use, it could still be loaded with live ammunition, and restored to its former highly potent and very lethal state.

Tyler looked around the room, seeing that Beth and Yvonne were reluctantly kicking apart junk in their efforts to find something useful. Lauren was standing off to the side, pale-faced and silent as usual, and Scott was busy interfacing with the store. He glanced at the plasma cutter that Beth was still holding, and remembered that Yvonne still didn't have a weapon.

He started to walk towards her, carrying the shotgun with his left hand. With any luck, she would stop complaining about not being able to play with fancy toys for a while.

Yvonne looked up, and caught sight of him as he approached her. "Hey, Darrell, what's up?" she asked, kicking over a supply crate for no reason as she did so.

"Well," Tyler began, looking around in a conspiratorial manner, "I found this, and I thought that in case I'm not here to protect you, you might want to have it." He presented the shotgun to her, grip first. "Don't tell Fairbanks, alright?"

Yvonne glanced down at it, then back up at Tyler. "For me?" she demanded, face lighting up with glee. "You shouldn't have!"

* * *

><p>AN: Well, I figured that was a good place to end it. This chapter started to drag on quite a bit more than I expected, becoming the longest at 6315 words. I've pretty much already planned out the next one, and hopefully it should have a lot more action.

It also took a heck of a long time for me to write this, mainly because I didn't feel like writing anything for something like two months. But of course, just as school is starting to get a lot harder, I suddenly got the urge to write again. A couple of weeks later, and here we are!

Those two months weren't all wasted, though. After a long six months of strife and toil, I finally managed to beat Dead Space 2 on Hardcore difficulty! (I realize this is a little boastful of me, but those who read this of all people should be able to understand this.) It felt good to finally have it done on a mode that gives so many other people trouble, and not for the right reasons *cough* insta-kill sequences.

I died a _lot_ at the start of the game, and between chapters 9 and 11, and the feeling of losing all the progress you just spent an hour making is definitely not pleasant. But I did it! And now I have a lot more appreciation for weapons other than the plasma cutter, which (at the risk of sounding sacrilegious) I really don't think is all that useful past the mid-game. Precise, yes, versatile, yes, but it just doesn't pack enough power to take on Necromorphs closer to the end of the game whilst still maintaining ammo parity. Not having to buy ammo or medpacks at the store was a _massive_ bonus, because it let me buy more power nodes. By the end of the game I was pretty much a walking tank.

I'm digressing here, but suffice to say that the experience provided me some inspiration for future events in the story, which will hopefully surface soon enough.

Anyway, I just want to say thank you to all my reviewers, who've been one of the biggest sources of inspiration for me to write! It really warms my heart to know that people read and enjoy this story enough to review, and I hope you continue to do so!

A couple notes, mainly in response to questions or suggestions:

- guccileopard: Thanks! It's good to know I can write their characters effectively. They were one of my biggest doubts when I first started the story, but I'm glad to see they've turned out well!

- gundamfanaticmp2338: Thank you as well! That was pretty much the reason I started writing this, to see a little of the other side. I haven't really given the characters specific ages, but Scott and Tyler are around their late twenties, with more experienced officers being mostly older, and the girls are all under 18. (I don't believe this part of society has changed much in Dead Space compared to today.) I'd say Tiedemann is well into the fifties, if not more (gene therapy can help to keep you looking young).

- Maphisto86: Thank you too! I like to have lots of detail in my writing. I do plan to have the canon characters (mainly just Isaac) make an appearance in the story. One of the things I felt the game didn't have enough of was confrontation between Isaac and active attempts to stop him (since Tiedemann pretty much stops trying after chapter 9), and I kind of want to add some more of it over the course of the story.

- Jan Lee: Thank you for continuing to read and review! It's good to have feedback from an accomplished writer such as yourself. Good luck with your Dead Space novel!

That's all I've really got to say this time around. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it, and please review!

Next chapter, more of our favourite characters!


	7. Subversion

**Author's Notes:** Hoooly crap, it has been a _long_ time since I last updated this story. And by long I mean almost seven months. That's actually a rather significant portion of my life.

I don't really have a compelling story to tell about what's happened in the intervening time, and to be honest I'm still wondering how that much time managed to pass so quickly. Suffice to say that school was and remains incredibly stressful, even more so because in less than a year it's going to be all over, and I'll have reached the culmination of over twelve years of my life. Won't it be grand?

But let's be honest, you just came here for the story. So without further ado, here it is: just over 8,000 words of pure quality. (Hint hint super ego.) And if I hadn't seen sense and decided to split the chapter, it would have been _even longer_. Enjoy!

* * *

><p><strong>Subversion<strong>

He'd been completely aware of the risks, of the consequences that his decision would entail for both himself and those that he was responsible for. It was the same burden that he'd willingly shouldered for his whole life, being given the power to make these decisions, and possessing the resolution to do so.

Despite never quite knowing if he was truly making the right choice, or even what the right choice should be, he carried on because it was what he had committed his life to.

And throughout that life, the results of his decisions had only served to strengthen that resolution. With that, he knew that he had done the best he could for himself and his people, the people his family had ruled and served for centuries past.

But there were always others, even greater men and women than him, who disagreed with the ideals that had defined his life. Time and time again they would make their displeasure known, which for the most part he could simply brush off. Because nothing was more important than himself and his people.

The message from his superior, the one man who even he was completely vulnerable to, made him wonder if he had really made the right choice.

_Tiedemann,_

_Disappointed in the evacuation decision._

_Consequences will be dire._

_That is all._

In Hans' experience, the lack of detail and emotive language was just another method of the trademark emotional manipulation that the Overseer employed. After so many years as a politician, Hans was painfully aware of just how effective it could be, even on somebody of his mental stature. He'd often wondered why he never seemed to be affected by the Overseer's mental intimidation; or whether he actually was, and didn't know it. But then, he always reflected, the insane man never questioned his sanity, because to be insane was to have a corrupted definition of being sane. If he could ask himself whether he was still his own man, then he must be.

There was, however, no questioning of the Overseer's physical power over people. Even Hans didn't know exactly where he was located in the Earth Government's food chain; only that it had to be near the top, given his constant consumption of the people at the bottom. It was no secret what happened to people who failed to toe the line, or even think about doing so; he'd even been responsible for it many times, a distasteful duty that he carried out to avoid the same fate.

Knowing that the day might come when the Overseer would finally lose his patience with Hans' stubborn refusal to be cowed, he had gradually taken precautions over the years to keep his position secure. Ever since he had taken on his duty as the Director of Titan Station, he had worked hard to bring the Sprawl out of the economic downturn it had sunken into after years of EarthGov's oppressive policies. He had provided incentives to encourage free enterprise, reduced taxes by two percent (he needed the rest of the Sprawl's tax revenue to implement his changes, but nobody could say no to paying less tax), and subsidized the medical industry to make it accessible to everyone – and most importantly, he had reconstructed the Sprawl's police and security forces in the face of his gradual economic changes.

Before, Titan Station's security officers had just been more of EarthGov's jacked-up trigger-happy goons, who were given a suit and a weapon without the proper training to use them. Hans had effectively torn down the Academy and started it over from scratch, drilling into the cadets the responsibilities of law enforcement, the respect they had to have for their community even if they had to treat them harshly, how _nothing_ excused the loss of life under any circumstances. Basically, he had taught them how to behave like police officers.

Eventually, they had accepted his policies and graduated from the Academy, beginning to perform their duties, and the extraordinary happened: the crime rate dropped for the first time in over a decade, much to the horror of the previous contingent of security officers. After that, the majority of them had drifted away from the Sprawl, either from Hans firing them or getting a transfer to somewhere else to exercise their brute-force practices.

The result was a community and security force that was loyal to him, and Titan Station, not EarthGov. Even if the Overseer tried to subvert the officers themselves, they wouldn't obey without asking at least one question. That hesitation might allow Hans to respond before anything could happen to him.

In any case, he still had something to bargain with. The Marker that EarthGov's science division had built over three years with the codes from Isaac Clarke's demented mind had produced invaluable research, all of which was stored in secure memory cores deep in the government sector, completely isolated from the outside universe. If the Overseer wanted that data, as he had indicated on more than one occasion, he would have to deal with Hans to get it.

The only complication was, ironically, the Marker itself. It had taken him a long time to notice, but shortly after its construction had been completed the residents of the Sprawl had experienced a large degree of unrest, culminating in the Unitologist riot only a month ago.

And then, of course, the Necromorphs had appeared. And suddenly his position was a lot more precarious. Even if they didn't reach Government Sector, Hans and his staff couldn't remain there indefinitely. They would have to evacuate themselves when EarthGov "assistance" arrived, and Hans was certain the Overseer would have a lovely reception party waiting for him in Earth orbit.

Today was only going to get worse.

* * *

><p>As if it was just another of the innumerable practice drills he'd gone through on his way to get through graduation and eventually here, Scott leaped through the open doorway; facing the left, legs bent, rifle raised, finger on the trigger. Beside him, Yvonne leaned out to cover the right of the corridor, her shotgun's flashlight pointing into the darkness, loaded with shredder rounds that had been specially requisitioned from the store. Now that the group had another effective weapon between them, the sarcastic schoolgirl had decided she wanted to be closer to the combat and the possibility of blasting those freaky monsters to bits. Scott had made a token protest, but Beth had been happy to retire to the rear for the time being, presumably shaken from their last encounter.<p>

With his flashlight beam he swept his side of the corridor, searching for hostiles, vents and supplies. Apart from the usual pieces of luggage and debris strewn over the floor, Scott couldn't see anything threatening. "Sector clear, two vents," he reported to the others.

"Nothing over here, either," Yvonne added, stepping out into the middle of the corridor. After a second, she let the shotgun hang from the shoulder strap she'd added to it. At Tyler's suggestion, she'd gone on a small shopping spree with his store account earlier, having requisitioned numerous spare magazines of shotgun shells that she was now carrying on a torso harness. She'd wanted grenades as well, but even Tyler had refused, joking that she was dangerous enough a girl already. Scott had remarked that she resembled a mercenary with all the straps she was wearing, to which she'd grinned and replied "That's the point."

Beth and Tyler entered the hallway behind them, both with their weapons lowered but ready. "Which way, Scott?" Beth asked, turning to pull Lauren along.

"To the left," he replied, taking a moment to check the schematic and pathfinder again. "Only three hundred metres to go. We can get there in five minutes and get the hell out of here."

"Amen to that," Tyler muttered, looking around the corridor as if he didn't trust Scott's assessment. "Alright, let's go."

Before any of them started moving, Lauren suddenly spoke without warning. "Do you hear it?" she asked, in a small whisper that nonetheless managed to carry clearly through the air.

Everybody turned to face her, surprised at the sound of her voice. Their surprise intensified when they saw the expression on her face; somehow, despite displaying all the appearances of a traumatized victim of the horror that was all around them, despite having experienced the blood and death first-hand, she was smiling. A _blissful_ smile. As if she'd just found inner peace with herself.

Maybe she had.

Scott spoke first, voicing the question they all had. "What are you talking about, Lauren?" he questioned calmly; but even as he did so, his hands unconsciously started to grip his pulse rifle harder.

"Can't you hear it?" she said, in that same breathy voice. "It's calling us. To our salvation, and beyond." She let out a tiny giggle, one that chilled them all to the core.

"The hell are you on about?" Tyler repeated, his voice betraying his gradually rising agitation. "What salvation?" A thought struck him, and he added "You're not talking about that Uni crap, are you?"

As if she had heard him, Lauren answered. "Salvation is what awaits all of us," she whispered. "It is the fate all will attain at the end of their life's journey. For life is but a transition from the light of the universe to the dark of the void. Salvation frees us." She paused, for a moment, and finished "Salvation makes us whole," before smiling blissfully again.

There was silence after that, enough for Scott to be able to hear the Sprawl's background environmental noises, until Beth spoke. "She's really gone, isn't she?" she murmured sadly.

"Yeah," Tyler agreed, lowering his gaze. "She's gone off the deep end for sure. I'm really sorry. She seemed like a good person."

Scott nodded morosely, but he knew they couldn't afford to stand around and commiserate while those monsters found another way to get the drop on them. He'd heard plenty of suspicious noises in the air vents and behind doors that had been auto-quarantined and locked, and while the group hadn't had any further encounters yet, he knew that just meant that the monsters were biding their time, able to sit back and make the first move at their own discretion.

"We have to keep moving," he stated bluntly, "This way, let's go." He nudged Yvonne with his elbow, reminding her to follow him, but kept walking without giving any of them the chance to object, forcing them to scurry to keep up.

Beth continued to pull Lauren along, as usual, but she couldn't just ignore what was happening to one of her friends – or at least, the person who used to be her friend. She glanced at her friend's face, which was still wearing that unbelievable happy smile that stood out against her pale white skin, and the small red splotches of blood that had splattered onto her clothes.

"Hey, Darrell?" she entreated, keeping one hand holding Lauren's and the other holding her plasma cutter at all times.

"Yeah, Beth?" Tyler replied, turning slightly to keep an eye on the corridor behind them.

"Shouldn't we do something for Lauren? Like, put her to sleep, or something like that?"

A groan escaped Tyler's lips, thankfully not finding its way through the helmet speaker, as he tried to think of what to say to reassure the clearly stressed schoolgirl. And to think he'd been joking around with these same girls with a cocky grin on his face just an hour or two ago. "Well…no, I don't think that'd be a really good idea," he answered slowly. "For one, she can still walk on her own, even if we have to drag her along." A rogue chuckle nearly left him, but he suppressed the impulse. "I've got some sedatives I could give her, but then we'd have to carry her, and that would slow us down even more, plus it would be harder to babysit her in combat. As long as she doesn't turn dangerous on us, it's better to keep her awake. For now, at least."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Beth replied, looking down at her feet momentarily. "I just– I just wish I could do something for her, you know? I hate seeing her like this. It's just…not right, you know?"

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Tyler said, letting out a sigh as he briefly let go of his rifle to stretch his arms out. "Don't worry. As soon as we get to the transport hub, we can get her looked at by some proper medics. They'll know what to do about her."

"I suppose," Beth agreed, but still seemed to be about to say something else when Scott suddenly ordered "Stop. Do you hear that?"

Everyone halted and started scanning the walls with their weapons, trying to hear what Scott had heard. It wasn't difficult; within moments of focusing their attention, they could all discern the strange, rasping sounds that seemed to be issuing from somewhere they couldn't see. But it had to be somewhere very close.

"It's gotta be behind the door," Tyler said after a couple of seconds. "But fuck if I know what it is."

"Agreed," Scott nodded. "We couldn't hear it from further down the hallway. I can't tell what it is, but it's not normal, and it can't be a coincidence."

"Which means those things are probably waiting for us," finished Tyler. "Damnit."

"Crap," Yvonne muttered. "Can't we just take another route around? There always have to be multiple ways to get somewhere."

"Yeah, that always sounds good in the classroom," Tyler replied, "but it doesn't always work like that. There's only one other route to get to the transport hub from here, and that's a thirty minute detour in a fucking maze. And somehow I doubt they'll wait that long for us to arrive."

As if to confirm Tyler's statement, Scott's RIG sounded to inform him of an incoming transmission. "Patrol Team Six, this is Lieutenant Karder. Acknowledge."

He immediately recognized her as the Captain's assistant officer, and responded accordingly. "Acknowledged, Lieutenant."

"Nice to hear your voice again, Karder," Tyler remarked, causing Scott to shoot him a look that went unseen.

"Give me a status report, Sergeant," Karder went on, ignoring the sarcasm. "How far away are you from the transport hub?"

"We're within five minutes' walking distance, but we think we're about to encounter an unknown obstacle, likely hostile. We don't know how much that'll add to the travel time."

"Roger that," came Karder's stern reply. "I would suggest you make haste regardless of what you encounter. The evacuation is already underway from here, and the last tram will leave in less than fifteen minutes. Our position hasn't come under attack yet, but it's only a matter of time, and anyone who doesn't get here in time will be left behind. Understood, Sergeant?"

"Understood, Lieutenant," Scott answered smoothly.

"Good. You mentioned before that you were escorting civilian survivors. How many have you got with you?"

"Just the three of them. Two are in good condition, and the third…" Scott hesitated, unsure how to describe it, and eventually said "Well, we can't really tell. She's mobile, though, so we should have no problems."

"Acknowledged. I'll see you when you arrive at the transport hub. Remember, Sergeant, fifteen minutes. Karder out."

As soon as Scott's RIG flashed to indicate the end of the transmission, Yvonne chuckled and remarked "What a bitch."

Beth couldn't resist using the typical response. "Coming from you, that says a lot," she giggled.

"What? Oh, fuck you!"

"Stop that!" Scott ordered as the ill-tempered girl started to raise her shotgun in a threatening manner, in a strict tone that he found unusual but necessary. "We know what we have to do, and there'll be plenty of time to kick around and relax when we're on a tram out of here. But _not before_. Understand?"

"Sorry, Scott," Beth replied in a low voice.

"Yeah, okay," Yvonne muttered. "Let's go already. I wanna kill shit."

Scott considered responding to that comment, but in truth found it hard to disagree with her. He gestured with his arm and commanded "Okay, stack up on the door. Same formation as last time, but this time we do it slowly. We don't want to give whatever's on the other side a good shot at us."

"Damn right," Tyler muttered, even as he braced himself against the wall to aim his rifle down the corridor behind them, while Beth took the other side.

"I'm ready, Scott," Yvonne said, checking her shotgun one more time.

"Then let's do it," Scott ordered. He waved his hand in front of the **Open?** holograph on the door, then ducked back to the side while its servos were still building up pressure to open it. He had enough time for one last glance to make sure his rifle was full and ready to fire.

The door slid open, and everyone tensed, waiting to fill whatever came out full of holes. But although the strange rasping noises were louder, and clearer now, nothing came out of the doorway.

"Go," Scott said, and moved without waiting for Yvonne's acknowledgement. He swept into the next hallway, hugging the doorway as he did so, and aimed his rifle into it, finger on the trigger. Tension was making him breathe heavily, and he tried to control it, managing some success. With no monsters barrelling down the corridor at him, or popping out of any vents, he allowed himself to relax a little, and started to scan the walls for any threats.

"Jeez, what the hell is all that shit?" Yvonne said, making him turn to face her. "It's fucking everywhere! Just look at this, you guys!"

Scott gulped instinctively, and took a step backwards, as he realized what she was talking about. Being so focused on monsters charging at them with roars and razor-sharp blades, he hadn't noticed that nearly the entire corridor was covered in some sort of…_shit_, he decided, was the only word for it. It was everywhere, mostly on the walls, but there were large patches on the floor and ceiling, smothering all the straight lines and edges. It looked distinctly like slabs of rotting meat, and, as he inhaled some of the air around him, stank like it too. He hurriedly engaged his suit's air filters, though they couldn't eliminate the stench entirely.

"Christ, that stinks," Beth complained as she came through the door, letting go of Lauren to fan her face with her hand. "It's worse than when the ventilation broke down in our section. And I thought that was bad."

"I know, right?" Yvonne replied. "And we have to walk through that shit. Fuck."

Ignoring the stench as best as he could, Scott continued to look around the hallway, trying to locate the source of the rasping sounds. While he couldn't directly see anything, he noticed that there were distinct blobs amongst the growth, that seemed to pulse up and down in time with the rasping. They put him in mind of pustules, or cysts, that he'd briefly seen during his mandatory first-aid course. The blobs looked similar, and certainly had to be dangerous in some way.

"Well, this is still the only way to the transport hub," Tyler said as he came up behind them, covering the rear corridor. "So I guess we'll just have to grin and –"

"Lauren! What the hell are you doing?!" Yvonne demanded loudly, causing everybody to spin and look.

Scott turned just in time to see Lauren skipping past him, in a way that completely and utterly defied any form of sanity that could be found in a situation like this. Not only was she skipping directly down the unsecured corridor that was full of weird biomass and cyst-like objects, but she was _laughing_ whilst doing it.

"The path to salvation is near," she said in that whisper, seeming to echo between the walls of the corridor. "All will embark on it in time, and be made whole."

"Lauren! Get back here!" Yvonne shouted, raising her shotgun and starting to run after the insane schoolgirl.

"No! Stay back!" Scott ordered; but even as Beth lunged forward to grab her back, he knew there wasn't enough time. In sickening slow motion, he watched as the nearest cyst spat out an equally small globule, glowing a sinister yellow, towards Yvonne and Beth. In a second, it would make contact with the pair of them and, undoubtedly, even if he was somehow able to aim at and shoot it in time, it would explode in some manner. It would be totally lethal at point-blank range, and the two schoolgirls would likely die a horribly, messy death.

So he did the only thing that he could think of: he thrust his left hand towards the bomb, and activated his kinesis module.

The localized gravity field locked on to the globule, and exerted its own force to nullify the bomb's inertia, a scant few centimetres before it would have struck.

With the bomb's motion under control, Scott held it several metres away from his face, the only distance he considered acceptably safe. Realizing he'd just narrowly saved the lives of those he was sworn to protect, he took several deep breaths, trying to calm his body's errant nervous and adrenal systems.

If he hadn't seen the danger, if he hadn't reacted in time, if he'd been just a second slower–

"Shit, what the hell was that?" Yvonne demanded, only now starting to realize the danger she'd put herself in. "Fuck, I could have died! This is just fucked _up_!"

"One of those cyst things launched some kind of bomb," Scott answered calmly, knowing it was the best way to get Yvonne to get over the shock, and being extremely careful not to accidentally drop what he was still holding. "It seemed to trigger when you and Beth stepped near it. We got lucky this time, and we're all thankful for that, but we have to be very, _very_ careful with these things. Alright?" He looked at the biological bomb again, and shuddered. The thing was wriggling, like it was alive in some way. He wasn't really surprised, considering the other monsters they'd already encountered, but it still disgusted him on some primitive level. Something like that just _shouldn't_ be alive.

"You're fucking telling me," Yvonne seethed, aiming down the corridor where Lauren had disappeared out of sight. "Why didn't they go off when Lauren went nuts? What the hell is wrong with her anyways?"

"Hell if I know," Tyler muttered darkly, glancing nervously around the corridor with his flashlight.

Yvonne growled, and swung back towards the cysts. She took aim at one on the wall with her shotgun, and, before Scott could warn her against it, fired.

The shredder shot punctured the cyst, causing it to squirt jets of some weird liquid, and it let out a loud squeal. Then it launched another of those bombs, which impacted against the opposite wall and exploded, blowing a hole out of the biomass that covered it.

Everyone exhaled as nothing else seemed to happen, then Tyler piped up "Well, that was underwhelming."

"At least we know how to get rid of them now," Scott replied, wondering exactly what he should say to Yvonne about her impulsive behaviour and apparent temper problems. Like Lauren had, she could easily become a liability if he wasn't careful how he handled her.

Before he could decide, there was a crashing sound behind them, and he whipped around to see a puker stumbling through the doorway they had just come through.

"Shit!" Tyler cursed, and fired his rifle at the puker. The bullets made it stumble, briefly, but it still roared and put its head back.

With one hand still holding the cyst bomb in the air, Scott couldn't aim and fire his rifle properly; but the puker was still about to vomit acid onto Tyler at close range, and he was failing to damage the creature significantly even with limb shots. Realizing the bomb was becoming a danger to himself and the others, he reversed the direction of the kinesis field and launched it at the wall behind the puker, his hands moving to aim his rifle and assist Tyler.

The bomb's arc was lower than he'd expected, and it landed just near the puker's feet. It exploded, and the blast tore the puker apart in a spray of gore and acid that coated the walls.

Scott stared at the carnage, still clutching his rifle, not believing that he'd caused it.

Then Tyler yelled out in pain, and Scott immediately rushed over to help him, forgetting all about making sure the area was secure. "Shit, Tyler, what the hell happened? Are you okay?" His teammate's RIG physiological monitor was showing yellow, which while not critical was most definitely a concern, both tactically and personally.

"No! Fucking hell," Tyler gasped, almost doubling over as he tried to steady himself. "That _fucker_…puked on my leg…" Then he froze. "Shit, that's acid! On my leg!" he barked out frantically. "Get it off, now!"

Scott didn't need to be told twice, and was already frisking his partner's suit pouches for the medical supplies. "Keep an eye out while I take care of Tyler!" he ordered the two now-very worried schoolgirls as he pulled the burns kit out of its designated pouch, breaking it open in his haste.

Recalling the correct procedure for dealing with acid burns, Scott quickly identified the wound on Tyler's right leg and sprayed it down with a can of aerosol. It was mostly water, but the mixture also contained clusters of nano-machines that actively identified and adhered to acid, neutralizing it before it could cause further injury.

When he was satisfied that the wound was clean, Scott grabbed a medium med pack and applied it liberally, making sure to cover the entire wound. The cyan gel was also a blend of chemical and nano-engineering from the EarthGov science division, being an analgesic, clotting and healing agent that had been the standard for paramedics and EMTs throughout human space for over a century. Once the gel sealed the wound to prevent possible infection (unlikely on a mostly-sterile space installation, but never dismissed), the embedded nano-machines began identifying and repairing damaged cells, speeding up healing by an order of magnitude.

It wasn't a substitute for proper medical treatment by qualified professionals, but it had miners and engineers injured in hazardous jobs back at work in days instead of weeks.

Tyler hissed in relief as the content of the med pack did its work. "Shit, man, that was too goddamn close. I don't know how long I can keep this up."

"We're almost there, Tyler," Scott assured his partner as he put the remaining medical supplies away, noting that Tyler's RIG monitor had increased to a stable green. "Just two hundred and fifty metres, and we'll be on a tram out of here. Think you can handle that?"

"I'll do that, but you're buying us all drinks once we're back in GovSec. Even if they're both underage."

Scott chuckled. "Deal. Now let's get the hell out of here." He turned to Yvonne, and directed her to cover the corridor behind them, in case any more monsters decided to jump them, and then turned back to face the cysts blocking their path ahead.

Remembering Yvonne's example, he located the cyst closest to them and fired a short burst into it. As expected, it squealed and launched its bomb. While it was in mid-air, Scott tried using kinesis again to catch it before it hit the wall, barely managing it with the aid of the module's motion compensator.

Making sure to adjust the arc properly this time, Scott aimed at another cyst and let it fly. To his gratification, the bio-bomb struck the second cyst almost dead on target, causing it to also squeal and release its bomb as it died.

"Alright, we can do this," he told the rest of the group, who had been carefully watching his example. "I'll clear these things out so we can move ahead. Yvonne, you keep guarding the rear in case more of those things show up. Tyler, help her out, and Beth, you stay with me and make sure I don't miss any. Everyone got that?"

They all nodded. "Good, let's do it." Scott focused on the corridor ahead, and began sweeping it, using the distinctive rasping of the cysts to locate them.

He'd only managed to clear another four cysts before he heard more roars behind them, followed by the reports of Yvonne's shotgun and Tyler's rifle firing. He glanced back for a moment, seeing a pair of slashers charging at them even as they were gunned down, and more emerging from the corridor behind them.

"You've got to be kidding me," Scott groaned as Tyler fired a grenade into the mass, revealing even more monsters coming at them.

* * *

><p>"Status report," Lewis said, for the fourth time in fifteen minutes.<p>

Rina Karder glared at the display in front of her, wondering why the Captain had become so nervous in the past few minutes. It wasn't like him; he was normally a man who was firmly in charge of whatever situation might present itself to the Sprawl's security forces, and he'd indeed proved that in his exemplary handling of the now-infamous Unitologist riot. Even when the front-line officers were being burned alive by incendiaries, and their formation compromised, Captain Lewis had directed the rest of them calmly and precisely, eventually managing to subdue the situation and send those Uni bastards into medical or detention where they belonged. Without Lewis to keep them focused and un-panicked, the situation could have ended a lot worse.

But now, with an invisible and totally unknown threat scratching at the walls and massacring the Sprawl's residents just out of sight, he was becoming twitchier, glancing between the walls every few seconds as if he'd heard something, and checking his sidearm more often than was acceptable or necessary.

And it wasn't just him, either. She'd noticed that other security officers and technicians around her were exhibiting the same strange behaviour, yet all of them claimed that it was nothing when she questioned them. It could have been simply the stresses of the situation none of them knew how to deal with, but she didn't believe that. Something was wrong here, terribly wrong.

Nevertheless, she obediently responded "Nothing significant to report, sir. The evacuation is on schedule, and the latest tram is just pulling out. Patrol Teams Six and Seventeen are still on their way, but have encountered difficulties. No breaches detected."

"Good, good," Lewis acknowledged, drumming his boots nervously on the floor and muttering something under his breath.

Karder turned to glare at the man, not bothering to hide the annoyance on her features. "Are you sure you're alright, sir?" she countered. "You really don't look too good, and the medics are right around the corner."

"I'm fine, Lieutenant," came the expected reply, the Captain not even looking at her. "Just keep on guard for anything that might happen."

"Yes, sir," she replied, but as soon as she was facing away again she sighed angrily. This sudden twitchiness that was affecting everyone was growing too dangerous for their safety. She was already in the mind to declare Lewis unfit for duty and take over command, but they still hadn't been attacked by anything, and it would be…difficult, to say the least, to account for her actions if nothing happened after all.

Brushing away the shiny brown hair that had made schoolboys swoon a long time ago, Karder scanned the display again for any abnormal occurrences. The loading of residents onto the evacuation trams was proceeding smoothly, and the remainder were still waiting patiently for their turn.

With nothing of significance happening there, Karder shifted her attention to the teams of security officers assigned to guard the transport hub's entrances. They were stretching the limits of their manpower, but she was pleased with the way that they'd been able to secure every approach satisfactorily. If any of those freaky monster things tried to get inside, they'd know about it.

To vent her frustration about the worsening condition of those around her, she started calling up each of the guard teams, demanding their status reports. She privately delighted in their reactions as they scrambled to provide an answer to their commanding officer, being able to influence people in that way.

"Corporal Markson, this is Lieutenant Karder. Acknowledge."

Until she reached Patrol Team Eight, who failed to respond entirely. Instantly suspicious, Karder first checked the connection to them. Her queries were being transmitted perfectly, and she was still receiving the RIG feeds from each of the team members. They just didn't respond to any transmissions.

Infuriated by a further complication to the evacuation, Karder overrode communications protocol and forced open a channel to the insubordinate team members. But when she repeated herself, there was still no response, only the steady, regular echoes of the three officers breathing in their helmets.

She cursed under her breath, and started to designate another security team to investigate when Eight's team leader said something that his communicator picked up.

"_Acknowledged, Director. We're moving into the transport hub now and anticipating contact. Markson out. Okay, people, let's move!"_

Karder watched in disbelief as the tactical display showed the three errant officers, through their RIG feeds, leaving their assigned post and moving towards the centre of the transport hub.

"What the hell are you doing, Corporal?" she snapped into her computer's pickup, even though she'd already realized it would have no effect. "Return to your assigned post _now_." When there was still no response, she growled in frustration and opened a channel to a nearby security team that was still functioning properly. "Patrol Team Nine, this is Lieutenant Karder. Acknowledge."

"Reading you loud and clear, Lieutenant," the team leader, Corporal Gencell, answered.

"Corporal Gencell, Patrol Team Eight is exhibiting suspicious behaviour," Karder said. "They have abandoned their post and are making their way inwards. You are to intercept them directly and have them explain themselves. Is that understood?"

"Roger that, Lieutenant. We're moving now. Stand by for contact."

Karder couldn't be bothered to reply, and instead turned to watch the progress of the two teams on the tactical display. As they closed in on each other, she was surprised to note that Markson's wayward team was advancing slowly in a wedge-shaped assault formation, as if they were uncertain of what was ahead. Which was ridiculous, because they surely would know what the rest of the security platoon stationed in the transport hub was doing. Karder herself would have told them a few hours ago, if nothing else.

"_Hold up,"_ the point man of Markson's squad suddenly announced. _"I think I heard something."_

"_Okay, possible contact,"_ Markson replied. _"Keep it tight, it's probably a patrol."_

At the same time, Corporal Gencell contacted Karder again. "Lieutenant, we're coming up on Eight's position. They're in the next hallway."

"Stick to what I told you," Karder ordered, watching the tactical display intently.

"Yes, sir. I see them now." A faint crackle marked Gencell switching his external speaker on to talk to Markson's team. "Jesus, Markson! What the hell do you think you're doing? You can't just leave your post like this! Are you trying to get us all killed, you fucking moron?"

"_Hostile contact! Engage!"_

"What the fuck–"

Gunshots rattled out of Gencell's RIG feed, causing the entire room to jerk in surprise and glance around nervously, before settling on the tactical display. Abruptly, the RIG of one of his team members flatlined, emitting a toneless beep as **User Vital Functions Terminated.** flashed up on the display.

"Shit! Eight's gone psycho!" Gencell yelled over the gunfire. "Sanson's down, we need backup here!"

Karder was frozen for a moment, still refusing to believe that one of her own security teams had just gone rogue.

"_They're in cover! Fitzandrew, suppressive fire!"_

"_I'm on it, sir!"_

"_Chew on this, you rock-headed bastards!"_

"Oh fuck, grenade –!"

There was an explosion, and Gencell's RIG transmissions cut off, at the same time that he and his surviving teammate both flatlined.

"_Area clear, proceed to the target."_

"_Roger that, sir."_

Almost everybody's eyes were remaining fixed on the tactical display, but Karder was not one of them. Finally snapping out of her disbelief, she immediately set her communicator to broadcast her transmission. "Attention all officers, this is Lieutenant Karder. Patrol Team Eight has gone rogue for unknown reasons; I say again, has gone rogue. They have already killed several officers, and are heading to the tram station.

"All officers are ordered to shoot on sight. Do not allow them to interfere with the evacuation. Karder out."

A flurry of acknowledgements quickly returned, and officers began moving on the tactical display to intercept the rogues.

Karder breathed out heavily, and glanced quickly at Captain Lewis, who was muttering something to himself again.

As she found herself glowering at her commanding officer again, a random piece of trivia popped up in her mind. Just before he blew up Gencell and his teammate with a quasi-grenade, Markson had taunted them. He'd called them rock-heads, a commonplace insult to Unitologists. But none of the security officers in the platoon were at all devoted Unitologists.

So what the hell was that supposed to mean?

"_That's enough!_" somebody suddenly shouted, and she whirled around to see one of the security officers in the room, Private Demerin, standing near the exit. One hand was held on his forehead, dripping with sweat, while the other clutched at his pulse rifle.

"You think you can just spout all that _bullshit_, about making us whole, and I'm just gonna nod my head and go along with it? Huh?" Demerin's eyes were filled with hate and anger, even as everyone else in the room started to back away and reach slowly for their weapons.

"Do you think that's fucking funny?" he went on. "_Do you?_ Well, I'll fill _you_ with holes! That'll make you whole! I'll fucking show you!"

He raised his pulse rifle, and clicked off the safeties.

"Shit," Karder swore, and dived behind her terminal as Demerin and everybody else opened fire, filling the air with pulse rounds.

* * *

><p>Corporal Jeremy Markson followed behind his point man Private Fitzandrew, with Private Tangiber guarding the rear, making good time as they made their way into the transport hub. Even so, he made sure to keep scanning his surroundings, not trusting that they weren't about to be ambushed somehow. The terrorists probably hadn't yet mustered a response to the loss of their patrol team, but they would soon.<p>

When they did, he and his team would be glad to give them more where that came from.

In some ways he'd always been prepared for this day, knowing that it would come sooner or later. He'd known that those damned Unitologists were nothing but trouble for the Sprawl, and he'd been proven right when an incendiary exploded behind his riot shield a month ago, enflaming his legs, his arms and parts of his torso.

Even though the doctors had given him skin grafts and repaired all the cell damage, putting him back on duty within three weeks, those moments of agony still burned brightly in his mind as a reminder that the rock-headed fanatics couldn't be trusted.

And now, today, he'd been proven right again.

Unitologist terrorists, not content with the harm and disorder they'd caused last time, had launched an outright assault the Sprawl; taking over all the major infrastructure before Titan Station Security had a chance to fight back. Nobody had a clue as to where the Marker-worshipping cult had managed to obtain a plethora of military-grade weaponry and equipment, including spacecraft to support their forces on the station; more evidence of the cult's illegal activities that EarthGov had failed to crack down on.

The terrorists had moved quickly and efficiently by taking control of the important transport hubs, preventing security from being able to move reinforcements to counter-attack. With the whole Sprawl effectively under the terrorists' control, they'd paused to mobilize their assault on the government sector. As the central transport hub was the only way to access Government Sector from the public sector, it was imperative that security re-take the central hub before the terrorists resumed their assault.

Markson and his team were a part of that mission, having been assigned to take back control of Transport Hub B-4 from a small terrorist garrison. Their orders had come directly from Director Tiedemann, telling them that they needed to secure the main tram lines so that security could mobilize to assault the central hub. Markson had at first questioned why only his team had been assigned to this section, but the Director had told him flatly that there were no other security squads nearby to assist, and they had to act immediately before the terrorists could cause any more damage.

Remembering the very reason he had become a security officer, he'd agreed to undertake the necessary duty to defend his home from the terrorists.

"Sir," Private Fitzandrew prompted him, and he noticed that they'd stopped at the end of a long hallway. "We've reached the central tram station. It's right through this door."  
>"Is it locked down?" Markson questioned. "Can we access the security systems from here?"<p>

"The door's locked," Fitzandrew replied, "but they've only used the standard security protocols for it. We can just use our security override on it. Frankly, I expected better from them, given they seem to be so organized."

"They're terrorists," Markson replied. "Their only cause is to sow anarchy and destruction in our civilization. Even if they're working together, they're still the scum of the universe. Remember that."

"Yes, sir."

"What if they're waiting for us on the other side," Tangiber asked, "and shoot us when we open the door?"

"We don't know if they are or not, but what we do know is we're gonna give them hell whether they're looking or not," Markson growled. "Stack up on the door, standard breach and clear."

The team spent a few seconds shifting into their assigned positions; Fitzandrew and Tangiber would enter first, followed by Markson, and clear the tram station of any hostiles.

"Go on my command. Three, two, one, go!"

Fitzandrew triggered the door's control holograph, and pressed up against the wall as it slid open. When no shots were fired through the open doorway, the two officers spun around the edges to aim into the room. Markson followed into the centre of the formation, rifle high on his shoulder.

His eyes rapidly swept across the room for targets, knowing he only had seconds to decide on his team's course of action.

He quickly identified at least two fireteams of terrorists, entrenched on the left and right of the room, outfitted with suits and weapons marked with Unitology symbols. Then he looked at the centre of the room, and regarded the cluster of unknowns standing there. He'd assumed they might be civilians, but as he looked closer he saw that many of them were wearing Unitology trinkets or jewellery; and more significantly, that all of them were carrying weapons.

The thought that the terrorists were recruiting and arming the Sprawl's resident rock-head population against EarthGov made his blood burn, and he gripped his pulse rifle tighter. They had to exterminate the threat now, before it could do any more harm to the innocent citizens of the Sprawl.

"Hostiles at ten, twelve and two o'clock!" he barked, as the mass of terrorists began to turn and aim their weapons at his team. "Each take a sector! Grenades, now!"

His officers didn't need to be told twice. As one they all adjusted their aim, compensating for the arc of the quasi-grenades, and fired. Fitzandrew at the left, Tangiber to the right, and Markson at the centre mass.

The blasts reverberated through the air as the three of them broke for cover, tearing apart the terrorists before they could react. The soft, unprotected Unitologists in the middle were simply shredded by the shrapnel, even as they were being pummelled by the shock wave. Within a second, the floor of the transport hub was littered with their pulped bodies, or at least what parts of them were left. It was impossible to see the metal of the floor, painted red as it was with the blood of the dead Marker-heads.

The terrorists wearing armoured suits fared better, however, and they quickly regrouped and opened fire on Markson and his team.

Markson reached a vending machine and flung himself behind it, barely managing to avoid being shot by the hail of pulse rounds. He looked around, seeing Fitzandrew lying prone under a bench, and Tangiber pressed up against a support column. Both of them were under heavy suppressive fire from the terrorists, who had positioned each fireteam at opposite corners to cover the whole room.

There was a break in the fire coming at them, and Markson leaned out carefully, seeing an exposed terrorist out of cover struggling to reload his pulse rifle. Markson aimed for his head and fired a burst, seeing the pulse rounds penetrate the helmet, and hearing the RIG's toneless flatline.

"They're behind the trolleys, eleven o'clock!" Fitzandrew yelled, as the terrorists refocused their fire on Markson's position.

"I see them!" Tangiber answered. "You lay down fire on them, I'll move up and flank them!"

"Roger that!" With fewer rounds being aimed at his position, Fitzandrew was able to crawl slightly to the right so that he could see the terrorists' position. Just as he was aiming, he caught sight of one of the terrorists leaning out of cover, with their pulse rifle angled upwards to launch a grenade. Fitzandrew shot him, and the terrorist's limbs flailed under the pulse rounds, causing the rifle to be pointed towards his comrades' position when he pulled the trigger.

Shoving a new magazine into his rifle, Tangiber saw the explosion and recognized his cue to move. Firing rapid bursts to discourage the terrorists from shooting at him, he advanced quickly towards their position, taking cover when his magazine began to run low.

With the terrorists now thoroughly pinned down by Fitzandrew and Tangiber, Markson broke out of cover and charged their position. Firing another grenade mainly to disorient them, he reached the edge of the trolley just as one of the terrorists stepped out to fire back. He was surprised to see Markson, but still managed to aim his weapon.

Markson dived and rolled forward as the terrorist fired, pulse rounds flying centimetres above his head. Before the terrorist could adjust his aim, Markson reached him and grabbed his gun, forcing it down and away, and swung his rifle into the terrorist's head.

He fired a single shot into the helmet, killing him, and then used the falling body as a shield as another terrorist fired at him with a shotgun. Using his kinesis module, he flung the body at the terrorist, stunning him long enough for Tangiber to shoot him in the back.

The room was silent, with only the hum of air conditioning and the thumps of objects and bodies falling to rest echoing in the empty air.

"No more contacts, sir," Fitzandrew reported.

"Negative over here, sir," Tangiber echoed.

"Good job, team," Markson said, and meant it. He was proud of the way they had accepted their duty to the Sprawl and its residents, and carried it out with the utmost efficiency and determination. He knew that by clearing Transport Hub B-4 of the evil, greedy, insurrectionist Marker-head terrorists, he'd done his part to help his community in its time of need. "Keep it secure, I'm going to report in. Director Tiedemann, this is Corporal Markson. We've cleared the hub's tram station of all hostiles. Awaiting orders."

Thirty seconds later, the reply came. "Well done, Corporal," Tiedemann's magnanimous voice spoke from the RIG's communicator. "You've done Titan Station proud, and our citizens thank you for the effort you've made. Now sit tight and keep the hub secure. Reinforcements are on the way to begin the assault on the central hub. Tiedemann out."

"Thank you, sir. Markson out." He looked around him, taking in the piles of dead Unitologists who had paid for their transgressions with blood. "Alright, let's secure those trams! Double time!"

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> Made it all the way here? You are awesome and I love you.

This was a chapter that I was somewhat uncertain about, due mainly to variations in my writing style and plan for the story's future over those seven months. I honestly didn't expect it would be anywhere near this long, but there's something about my writing process which just has to expound on every detail I deem significant, and hopefully portraying my vision accurately and in an enjoyable manner.

Thanks to the people who reviewed on the last chapter, you really do mean a lot to me! (Especially you, Jan Lee, you're special. Teehee.) Feel free to ask me any questions about me or the story in reviews or PMs, or offer any constructive criticism you might have.

That's all for now, folks! See you next time, whenever that might be!


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